An earthquake felt in the Middle Colonies on December 7, 1737, was the occasion for publishing these essays. Duane printed them (Works, IV, 380–91), as did Sparks and Bigelow, but Alfred Owen Aldridge has shown them to be almost verbatim reprints from Chambers’ Cyclopaedia; or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.... (London, 1728), I, 266–8.3 See above, I, 170.