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Show 418 EARTIIQUA'KE IN CALABRIA, A.D. 1783. ground. It was compared by the Academicians to a great tooth half extracted from the alveolus, with the upper part of the fanO'S exposed. (See cut No. ~0.) Alon°g the line of this shift, or " fault" as it would be termed technically by miners, the walls were found to adhere firmly to each other, and to fit so well, that the only signs of their having been disunited was the want of correspondence in the courses of stone on either side of the rent. In some walls which had been . thrown down, or violently shaken, in Monteleone, the separate stones were parted from the mortar so as to leave an exact mould where they had rested, whereas in other cases the mortar was ground to dust between · the stones. It appears that the wave-like motions, and those which are called vorticose or whirling in a vortex, often produced effects of the most capricious kind. Thus, in some streets of Monteleone, every house was thrown down but :one; in others, all but two; and the buildings which were spared were often scarcely in the least degree injured. In many cities of Calabria, all the most solid buildings were thrown down, while those which were slightly built, escaped; but at Rosarno, as also at Messina, in Sicily, it was precisely the reverse, the massive edifices being the only ones that stood. II Two obelisks (No. fll) placed at the extremities of a magnificent fayade in the convent of S. Bruno, in a small town called Stefa~o del Bosco were observed to have undergone a movement of a. sm~ gular kind. The shock which agitated the building is descrlb~ as having been horizontal and vorticose. The pedestal of eacl obelisk remained in its original place j but the separate stones . FtSSURF!S-IIOUSES E~GULPJtED. · 419 ab. ove. were turned p a1· t'• a 11 y roun d , and removed someti.m es mne mchcs fr.:>m. their position, without falling. ~ t appears evident that a great part of the rending and fig .. surmg of the ground was the effect of a violent motion from below upwards; and in a multitude of cases where the rents and chasms opened and closed alternately, we must suppose that the earth ':as by turns heaved up, and then let fall again. W c m.ay conceive the same effect to be produced on a small scale, If, by some mechanical force, a pavement composed of large flags of stone should be raised up and then allowed to fall suddenly, so as to resume its original position. If any small pebbles l1appened to be lying on the line of contact of two flags, they would fall into the opening when the pavement rose, and be swallowed up, so that no trace of them would appear after the subsidence of the stones. In the same manner, when the earth was upheaved, large houses, trees, cattle, and men were engulphed-in an instant in chasms and fissures • and when the ground ~ank down again, the earth closed upo~ them, so t.hat no vestige of them was discoverable on the surface. In many instances, individuals were swallowed up by on~ shock, and then thrown out again alive, together with large Jets of water, by the shock which immediately succeeded. . At J erocarnc, a ~ountry which, according to the Academicians, was lacerated m a most extraordinary manner, the fis· sures ran in every direction like cracks on a broken pane Filfurll uea~ Jerocar11c, i11 C~labria, cau1cd blJ tile cart!12uakc ~/lroo· 2E2 |