594 Transactions. — Chemistry and Physics. 



Art. LXI. — The Tasmanian Earthquake of the 27th Janu- 

 ary, 1S92:'''- 



By George Hogben, M.A., Secretary of the SeismoJogical 

 Committee, Australasian Association for the Advancement 

 of Science. 



[Bead before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 2nd November, 



1898.] 



Plate LXII. 



This earthquake was felt over almost the whole of Tasmania ; 

 in Victoria, as far west as Melbourne ; and in the south-east 

 part of New South Wales. I am indebted for the data to the 

 late Captain Shortt, E.N., who was kind enough to send 

 me the whole of his official returns ; to Mr. A. B. Biggs, of 

 Launceston ; to Professor Hutton, F.E.S., of Canterbury 

 College, New Zealand; and to Professor Liversidge, F.E.S., 

 of Sydney, who happened to be at Launceston at the time : to 

 K. J. EUery, Esq., C.M.G., for Victoria ; and to H. C. Russell, 

 Esq., C.M.G., for New South Wales. Further details I owe 

 to the Launceston Examiner, Tasmanian Neivs, and Telegraph 

 of the 28th January, 1892. I have also read Mr. A. B. Biggs's 

 letters in the Laimceston Examiner of the 23rd February, 

 1892, and the 6th April, 1892. To these papers I would refer 

 any one who wishes to know the more picturesque details of 

 the earthquake. 



The Tasmanian returns give the reported times for the 

 beginning of the earthquake from sixty-one different places ; 

 but the majority of them give the time only to the nearest 

 multiple of five minutes — perhaps a natural thing for an in- 

 experienced observer to do, yet a kind of observation which 

 one is inclined to suspect in a calculation which requires for 

 its success observations correct at least to within a half- 

 minute — that is, to the nearest minute. All such times, 

 therefore, must be rejected unless we have evidence to show 

 that they were actually correct to the desired degree of 

 accuracy, and checked by Hobart mean time. The rest, 

 except where obviously at variance with any theory of the 

 origin, were included in the normal equations for finding the 

 origin of the earthquake. As a consequence of that investiga- 



* This paper was handed to the Tasmanian Royal Society in Janu- 

 ary, 1893, but the manuscript was lost, and has only now (1898) been 

 found. 



