92 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



a maximum, and then again diminishes until it disappears at 

 Wolfenbuttel. 7 C, 1873, 409. 



THE EARTHQUAKE OF JUNE 29TH IN NORTHERN ITALY. 



Concerning the very serious earthquake that occurred on 

 the 29th of June in the state of Venice, some details have 

 recently been systematically collected by De Fonvielle, who 

 linds that, as near as he can estimate, the centre of the dis- 

 trict most severely affected by the shock was in the valley of 

 the Marino, in the province of Bellune, a region frequently 

 affected by previous earthquakes. The shock was felt in 

 Italy, Germany, in the Tyrol, and even in Munich, and was, 

 by coincidence, of course, followed in Germany by a very vi- 

 olent storm, which, in passing over Vienna, tore away the 

 captive balloon exhibited at the Exposition. 6 B, 1873, 

 66. 



THE THEORY OF THE SECULAR YARIATION OF THE LEVEL OF 



THE OCEAN. 



Dr. Schmick has not hesitated for some time j^ast to warm- 

 ly advocate in the German scientific periodicals the actual 

 existence and periodicity of great changes upon the earth's 

 surface, by which the portions once forming the dry land 

 have become the bottoms of oceans. Tliat such changes 

 have actually taken place, the geological strata have in the 

 hands of the paleontologists long since given satisfactory 

 demonstration, but the periodical nature of these changes has 

 not yet seemed so well established. Whewell, in his essay 

 on the flood, seems to have been the first author of scientific 

 ability who has attacked this problem. He sought to explain 

 the historical tradition of the Flood by the assumption of a 

 great tidal flood caused by the sun and moon, which, how- 

 ever, the Newtonian theory of gravitation, as is now known, 

 demonstrates could not possibly have taken j^lace except in 

 the South Pacific Ocean, and which then would have only 

 appeared as an oscillating flood, and not as a permanent one, 

 enduring for 120 days, as the sacred record describes it. For 

 the solution of this difficulty, some material has recently been 

 offered in the details of the great earthquake w^ave which, in 

 August, 1868, accompanied the terrible earthquake that de- 

 stroyed Arica, in Peru. Tlie latter earthquake has been es- 



