484 SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1885. 



Bay of Yedo, and both affecting the same area. {Nature, XXXI : 515.) 

 Commenting upon this same earthquake, Prof. J. A. Ewing, of Dundee, 

 notes that the instrumental record shoWs an actual motion of the ground 

 of 4.3 centimeters, an amount which is in most striking contrast with 

 the 5 to 7 millimeters that previous experience in Japan had led him to 

 regard as the extreme amount of displacement in ordinary Yedo earth- 

 quakes. {Nature, xxxi : 581.) 



Early in 1885 Professor Ewing received a grant of £100 from the 

 Government grant committee with which to institute observations of 

 earth movements at Ben Nevis. He proposes to set up apparatus with 

 which to look for earth tremors, and also for slow changes of level of 

 the ground. {Nature, xxxi : 298.) 



The French Academy of Sciences has proposed as the subject for the 

 Vaillant prize the following : " To study the influence which may be 

 exerted on earthquakes by the geological state of a country, by the ac- 

 tion of water or of other physical causes." The memoirs competing 

 for this prize are to be delivered before June 1, 1886. {Compt. Bend., ci : 

 1413.) 



A second conference of persons interested in seismolorgy was called by 

 the Director of the United States Geological Survey, and met in Wash- 

 ington on November 25, 1885. The conference was presided over by • 

 Captain Dutton, of the Geological Survey, and included Mr. Hay den, of 

 the Survey, Professors Paul, of the Naval Observatory, Mendenhall and 

 Marvin, of the Signal Service, Davis, of Cambridge, and Eockwood, of 

 Princeton. It was agreed that the most important advance in the study 

 of seismic phenomena was to be reached through a distribution of seis- 

 moscopes, with sufficiently accurate clocks, over certain areas in the 

 United States which have been shown to be most subject to such dis- 

 turbances. At the same time the organization of a large corps of non- 

 instrumental observers was thought desirable. The work of bibliogra- 

 l)hy was reported to be in a good state of progress, and several seismo- 

 scopic instruments were exhibited. {Science, VI : 491.) 



SEISMOMETRY. 



In a long paper printed in the eighth volume of the Transactions 

 of the Seismological Society of Japan, Professor Milne has gathered a 

 detailed description of ten series of experiments carried on at different 

 times from 1881 to 1884, for the purpose of investigating phenomena con- 

 nected with earth vibrations. The experiments were all performed in 

 or near the city of Tokio, and consisted in originating artificial earth 

 vibrations, usually by dropping a heavy weight or exploding dynamite, 

 and then studying the circumstances of their propagation by means 

 of the various seismographs devised by himself or Professor Ewing 

 or Professor Gray. Some of these experiments have been already de- 

 scribed elsewhere by the author {Lond. Phil. Mag.). The paper is closed 

 by a statement in six pages of fifty-seven general results, among which 

 are these: The first effect upon a seismograpH with a single index is an 



