THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE 99 



In my immediate vicinity the destructive effects were trivial, and 

 I did not learn until two hours later that a great disaster had been 

 wrought on the opposite side of the hay and that San Francisco was in 

 flames. This information at once incited a tour of observation, and 

 thus began, so far as I was personally concerned, the investigation of 

 the earthquake. A similar beginning was doubtless made by every 

 other geologist in the state, and the initial work of observation and 

 record was individual and without concert. But organization soon 

 followed, and by the end of the second day it is probable that twenty 

 men were working in cooperation under the leadership of Professor 

 -J. C. Branner, of Stanford University, and Professor A. C. Lawson, 

 of the State University at Berkeley. At that time and for several 

 succeeding days the ordinary means of communication were so paralyzed 

 or overburdened that no messages passed between these two centers of 

 organization ; but as the needs of the hour were patent to all, the work 

 was not prejudiced by the lack of intercommunication. 



On the third day after the shock Governor Pardee appointed a 

 State Earthquake Investigation Commission, naming as its chairman 

 the head of the geological department of the State University, Pro- 

 fessor Lawson, and including in its membership Professor Branner, of 

 the Stanford University, Professors Davidson and Leuschner, of the 

 State University, Professor Campbell, of the Lick Observatory, Mr. 

 Burckhalter, of the Chabot Observatory, Professor Eeid, of Johns 

 Hopkins University and Mr. Gilbert, of the United States Geological 

 Survey. The commission held its first meeting three days later, when 

 the scope of its work was considered and defined, provision was made 

 for circulars soliciting information, an announcement was prepared for 

 the purpose of relieving certain groundless fears entertained by a por- 

 tion of the community, and two committees were appointed for the 

 general work of observation. To the first committee, with Professor 

 Lawson as chairman, was assigned the determination and study of 

 surface changes associated with the earthquake and the collection of 

 data as to intensity, so that isoseismals, or curves of equal intensity, 

 might be drawn upon the map. To the second committee, with Pro- 

 fessor Leuschner as chairman, was assigned the collection of data for 

 the drawing of coseismals, or lines connecting points on the earth's sur- 

 face reached by the shock at the same instant. Some weeks afterward, 

 when the main features of the earthquake had become known, a third 

 committee was appointed, with Professor Eeid as chairman, to consider 

 the relations of the earthquake phenomena to certain problems in 

 geophysics, or the science of the inner earth. 



The work of these three committees is still in progress, and will 

 not be completed for several months. The actual drawing of isoseis- 

 mals and coseismals can not be performed until a large body of obser- 



