xxxiv GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



country, all ranged along certain straight lines or belts, 

 which, in one remarkable instance, coincides with a river 

 valley so perfectly as to afford the basis for very plausible 

 speculations as to the dependence of the earthquakes upon 

 the infiltration of surface water. 



A series of terrible earthquake shocks is reported to have 

 occurred in the month of May in the province of Borussa, in 

 Asia Minor. Hundreds of houses have been destroyed and 

 lives lost. 



Perrey has published another great catalogue of earth- 

 quakes ; the present volume being especially devoted to the 

 year 1871. 



The minute vibrations that for some days attend and gen- 

 erally precede severe earthquakes have been especially ob- 

 served and studied by Serpieri, who in " Meteorologia Itali- 

 ana" gives some of his conclusions as to the use of the pen- 

 dulum seismograph in predicting earthquakes. 



Terrestrial Magnetism and Auroras. One of the finest pub- 

 lications in the department of terrestrial magnetism is the 

 quarto volume recently received from the observatory at 

 Trevandrum. This is the first of a series of volumes pub- 

 lished at the expense of his Highness the Maharajah of Tra- 

 vancore. Dr. Broun, who was the director of the observa- 

 tory from 1852 to 1865, is the editor of the present volume, 

 and in it he has given a fine example of the good results that 

 may be obtained by a careful study of every possible source 

 of error in the instruments and observations. 



Equally extensive is the large quarto published by the 

 Dutch government in Java, and giving in detail the mag- 

 netic and meteorological observations made from I860 to 

 1870 at Batavia under the direction of Bergsma. Many 

 general results are given in the Introduction to this volume, 

 and the whole contains a most important contribution to 

 our knowledge of the climate of that portion of the Pacific 

 Ocean. 



The subject of " terrestrial electricity " has been studied on 

 a grand scale by Schwendler, electrician to the Indian gov- 

 ernment. Over ten thousand observations made under his 

 direction during the past six years on telegraph lines in In- 

 dia have shown that there is a uniform ground current from 

 east to west, and have paved the way for improved methods 



