368 Notes on the Earthquake of Octoher, I860* 



the most intense seat of earthquake force in the world. It sends 

 off branches in dififerent directions. One of these passes eastward 

 and southwest through New Guinea and the New Hebrides to 

 New Zealand, and probably beyond it to the Antartic continent, 

 giving off a long branch through the Polynesian Islands. Another 

 goes northward and spreads itself in Central Asia. A third run- 

 ning up the Malayan Peninsula and through northern India, Persia, 

 and Asia Minor, passes along the south of Europe and extends 

 to the Azores, giving off a faint branch through France and the 

 British Islands to Iceland. The great earthquake band thus traced, 

 includes nearly all the active volcanoes, except a few apparently 

 isolated spots in the Ocean, like the Sandwich Islands. 

 There are however broad sheets of the earth's surface traversed 

 by the earthquake vibrations proceeding from this band of maxi- 

 mum action, and there are also subordinate bands of small inten- 

 sity which have not been noticed in the above sketch. To the 

 latter belongs the east coast of America, which seems to consti- 

 tute a continuation of the West Indian branch, extending upwards 

 along the Appalachian chain to Labrador, and perhaps completing 

 the circle of the North Atlantic by a submarine continuation to 

 Iceland. 



We of course know nothing certainly of earthquakes in eastern 

 America until after its colonisation by Europeans, yet this does 

 not constitute a difference between America and the old continent 

 so great as might at first sight be supposed. We know compa- 

 ratively little of earthquakes even in the old world until the 16th 

 century. Nothing more strongly indicates the little attention 

 given to natural phenomena in the middle age of the earths 

 history, than the fact that while the recorded earthquakes even 

 in Europe and the neighbouring parts of Asia and Africa are only 

 from 10 to 68 per century in the first 15 centuries of our era, they 

 rise in the 18th century to 660 and in the 19th already amount 

 to- 925. No attention seems to have been given to earthquakes 

 in the periods of classical antiquity and the middle ages, except 

 when they proved very destructive or were supposed to be con- 

 nected with some historical event. The great and otherwisa 

 alarming increase of earthquakes in modern times is in truth to 

 be attributed principally to the revival of learninof, to the inven- 

 tion of printing, and to the progress of the natural and phy- 

 sical sciences. Hence between the loth and 17th centuries the 

 recorded earthquakes in Europe and its vicinity rise suddenly 



