THE 



POPULAR SOIEJSTOE 



MONTHLY 



DEOEMBE.K, 1906 



THE BOGOSLOFS 



By President DAVID STARR JORDAN and GEORGE ARCHIBALD CLARK 



STANFORD UNIVERSITY 



FN the southern portion of Bering Sea, about thirty-seven nautical 

 miles northwest from the island of Unalaska, lies a group of small 

 volcanic islets known as Bogoslof, in Russian, Joanna Bogoslova, St. 

 John, the Theologian. There are now three of these, all of which have 

 risen from the sea, hot and steaming, within historic times. An espe- 

 cial interest attaches to them just now from the fact that the third 

 and largest of the group appeared at about the time of the great earth- 

 quake of April 18, 1906. 



The possibility of a connection between the disturbances at Bogoslof 

 and those which caused the California earthquake is heightened by the 

 fact that the great earthquake rift, which extends through the Coast 

 Range of California for a distance of 200 miles, follows a direction, 

 which, if produced northward to Bering Sea, would pass near the 

 islands of Bogoslof. Again this earthquake rift was largest, and its 

 effects more violent, where it entered the sea in Mendocino County 

 than at any other point throughout its course, the extent of the lateral 

 movement along the crack increasing from about two feet in Monterey 

 County to about 16y 2 feet at Point Arena, where it finally enters 

 the sea. 



In opposition to this view may be placed the improbability that an 

 earthquake rift or fault would extend so far as from the center of 

 California to Bering Sea, a distance of more than 2,000 miles, and 

 through such great depths of water as intervene between Point Arena 

 and Bogoslof. It is also stated that the evidence of the seismograph, 

 so far as understood, favors the idea that the great earthquake was 



VOL. LXVIII.— 31. 



