A STUDY OF RECENT EARTHQUAKES. 819 



any member of our society who doubts the reality of God's government, 

 but only to those who, with Dr. Martineau, regard it as the very first of 

 all truths. But to them I say, if miracles still exist, if they still exist in 

 the very form in which they are said to have existed in the Acts of the 

 Apostles, if they can be attested by men of science themselves, if, in 

 any Church, they happen not merely every year, but in considerable 

 numbers every year, and admit of all the tests to which Mr. Stephen 

 has referred us, then surely it can be nothing but a most reprehensible 

 and guilty fastidiousness to give the go-by to the evidence of these 

 things, simply on the groiind that they are mixed up with a great deal 

 of vulgar taste and of hysterical feeling. Is it not better to have a 

 vulgar belief in God than to have a fine susceptibility to scientific 

 methods ? Is it not better to have a feverish longing to do his will 

 than to have a delicate distaste for morbid devotion ? The uniformity 

 of Nature is the veil behind which, in these latter days, God is hidden 

 from us. I believe in the uniformity of Nature, but I believe in it far 

 more fervently as the background on which miracle is displayed than 

 I do merely as the fertile instrument of scientific discovery and of 

 physical amelioration. Nineteenth Century. 



A STUDY OF EECENT EARTHQUAKES. 



By M. A. DAUBEEE. 



SINCE communicat'i'on between the extremities of the earth has 

 become both easy and rapid, our ideas on many subjects have 

 been modified and have become more precise. Facts that formerly 

 appeared singular and extraordinary are recognized as frequent and 

 habitual. This is the case with reference to earthquakes. Numerous 

 telegrams, a few months ago, told in every part of the civilized world 

 of the shocks from which Andalusia, in Spain, was suffering. To the 

 astonishment and lively curiosity which these phenomena excited was 

 added a deep emotion which disasters of so dramatic and painful a 

 character would cause. The interest in the study of these things is 

 also enhanced by the additional knowledge it gives us respecting the 

 constitution of the crust of the earth knowledge which, constantly 

 increasing, enables us the better to comprehend the different parts of 

 the mechanism of these subterranean perturbations. 



Among the more recent earthquakes was the one that destroyed 

 most of the Island of Scio. On the 3d of April, 1881, about an hour 

 and forty minutes after noon, the city of Scio and thirty or forty 

 villages in the southern part of the island were disturbed with a vio- 

 lent trepidation. The shaken and cracked houses were still standing, 

 when, a few minutes afterward, a second shock, equally violent, came 



