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foot of Veſuvius, during one of theſe volcanic ſtorms was ſtruck with lightning, which having ſhattered many doors and windows, and damaged the furniture, left for ſome time a ſtrong ſmell of ſulphur in the rooms it paſſed through. Out of theſe gigantic and volcanic clouds, beſides the lightning, both during this eruption and that of 1979, the author adds, he had, with many others, ſeen balls of fire iſſue, and ſome of conſiderable magnitude, which burſting in the air, produced nearly the ſame effect as that from the air-baloons in fire-works, the electric fire that came out having the appearance of the ſerpents with which thoſe fire-work baloons are often filled. The day on which Naples was in the greateſt danger from the volcanic clouds, two ſmall balls of fire, joined together by a ſmall link like a chain-ſhot, fell close to his Caſino at Poſilipo; they ſeparated, and one fell in the vineyard above the houſe, and the other in the ſea, ſo cloſe to it that he heard the ſplaſh in the water. The Abbe Tata, in his printed account of this eruption, mentions an enormous ball of this kind which flew out of the crater of Veſuvius while he was ſtanding on the edge of it, and which burſt in the air at ſome diſtance form the mountain, ſoon after which he heard a noiſe like the fall of ſtones, or of a heavy ſhower of hail. During the eruption of the 15th at night, few of the inhabitants of Naples, from the dread of earthquakes, ventured to go to their beds. The common people were either employed in devout proceſſions in the ſtreets, or were ſleeping on the quays and open places; the nobility and gentry, having cauſed their horſes to be taken from their carriages, ſlept in them in the ſquares and open places, or on the high roads just out of the town. For ſeveral days, while the volanic ſtorms of thunder and lightning laſted, the inhabitants at
