124 S. SEKIYA AND Y. KIKUCHI 



watery places. In the case of Bandai, sucii formation might have oc- 

 curred in the marshy plateau of Numano-taira and perhaps in other 

 limited areas among the valleys. But we regard it as impossible that 

 ejections of water or soil, produced by seismic action, could have 

 occurred over the great area covered by the pits under discussion on 

 the rocky summits and steep slopes of Bandai and Akahani. It is 

 true that in Numano-taira large round or elliptical holes were made, 

 some of them having diameters of over 7 metres and being left partly 

 filled with water. But, though it is not impossible that these par- 

 ticular holes were produced by seismic action, the more probable ex- 

 planation is that the filling débris from Kobandai covered the ground 

 to a great thickness, burying under if forests and ponds; and it is 

 natural to expect that in this great field of loose debris depressions 

 would be formed here and there by the falling in of the superincum- 

 bent layers. We ourselves observed some of the holes gradually in- 

 creasing in size by the filling in of their margins. 



In their paper read before the Seismological Society of Japan, 

 Professors C. G. Knott (Tokyo) and C. Michie Smith (Madras) con- 

 tend that by far the great majority of holes are due simply to the 

 uprooting of trees caused by the hurricane. This they regard as es- 

 pecially true of the region to the south-east of Obandai. They argue 

 that if the countless numbers of holes were due to falling stones a 

 great many other stones must surely have fallen on the same ground 

 with velocities too small to make holes. But of these other stones 

 there is no evidence. Besides they doubt if it is dynamically pos- 

 sible for a filling stone to make conical holes of the size and form 

 described so fully by Mr. Odium. For a stone to bury itself several 

 feet in the ground and at the same time make a violent " splutter " 

 is not, they think, at all credible. After the undoubted effects of 

 uprooting of trees, and of landslips in a volcanic soil violently shaken 



