Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

     Various interesting facts have been noted in relation to the demeaner of animals pior to a great convulsion. It was towards noon, beneath a clear and almost cloudless sky, with the sea breeze freshly blowing, that the cities of Conseption and Talcahuano, on the coast of South America, were desolated in 1835. At ten o’clock, two hours before their ruin, the inhabitants remarked with surprise, as altogether unusual, large flights of sea fowl passing from the coast, towards the interior; and the dogs at Talcahuano abandoned the town before the shock which levelled its buildings was felt. Not an animal, it is believed, was in the place when the destruction came. In 1805, previous to an earthquake at Naples, which took place in the night, but was most severely felt in the provinces. The oxen and cows began to bellow; the sheep and goats bleated strangely; the dogs howled terribly; and the horses fastened in their stalls leaped up endeavering to break the halters which attached them to the mangers. Rabbits and moles were seen to leave their burrow; birds rose, as if scared, from the places on which they had alighted; and reptiles left in clear day-light their subterranean retreats. Some faithful dogs, a few minutes before the first shock, awoke their sleeping masters by barking and pulling them, as if anxious to warn them of impending danger; and several persons were thus enabled to save themselves. On the recent occasion all the dogs in the neighborhood of Vallo howled before the people were sensible of their danger. To account for these circumstances it is conjectured that, prior, to actual disturbance, noxious gasses and other exhalants are emitted from the enterior of the earth through crannies and pores of the surface, invisible to the eye, which distress and alarm animals gifted with acute organs of smell.