1. Michele Torcia (1736–1808), a member of the Royal Academy of Naples, had lived abroad as secretary of a Neapolitan legation and was presently a librarian, antiquarian, and author. He must have met BF while living in London c. 1767–8, as he invoked that connection when inscribing to BF a copy of his Iscrizione sulla morte dell’imperatrice Maria-Teresa … ([Naples, 1781]), now at the Hist. Soc. of Pa.: “To Benjamin Franklin The most vigorous support of the American Liberty, justly admir’d throughout all Europe & future object of admiration to all ages the author an ancient acquaintance in London at Smyrna-coffy-hous respectfully sends.” When and by whom that book was delivered is not known. Likewise, there is no information on how BF acquired Torcia’s work on the eruption of Vesuvius (1779), which was in his library when the 1781 inventory was taken: XXXVI, 333n 334.

The brochure mentioned in the present letter may have been one of the several reports Torcia wrote on the natural phenomena that had alarmed Italians and others in 1783: the earthquakes in Calabria (February and March), and the dry fog that blanketed Europe in July and August. Lalande may have shown BF the paper on the dry fog that Torcia published in Nuovo Giornale Enciclopedico (September, 1783), pp. 99–114, whose subtitle announced that it had been read by Lalande in Paris and other “Filosofi” in Europe. Lalande probably knew that BF had written on possible causes of the dry fog, as he himself had: XL, 353; XLII, 289–94. For Torcia see Statuti della Real Accademia delle scienze e delle belle lettere eretta in Napoli … ([Naples], 1783), p. 99; Augusto Placanica, “Michele Torcia e il terremoto del 1783: storia naturale e riformismo politico,” Rivista Storica Italiana, XCV (1983), 419–46.