in the animal economy, is the power whereby the absorbent vessels imbibe the juices, &c.

ABSORPTIONS of the Earth, a term used by Kircher and others for the sinking in of large tracts of land by means of subterranean commotions, and many other accidents.

Pliny tells us, that in his time the mountain Cymbotus, with the town of Eurites, which stood on its side, were wholly absorbed into the earth, so that not the least trace of either remained; and he records the like fate of the city Tantalis in Magnesia, and after it of the mountain Sypleus, both thus absorbed by a violent opening of the earth. Galanis and Garnatus, towns once famous in Phoenicia, are recorded to have met the same fate; and the vast promontory, called Phlegium, in Ethiopia, after a violent earthquake in the night-time, was not to be seen in the morning, the whole having disappeared, and the earth closed over it. These and many other histories, attested by the authors of greatest credit among the ancients, abundantly prove the fact in the earlier ages; and there have not been wanting too many instances of more modern date. Kircher's Mund. Subter. p. 77. See Earth and Earthquake.