36 . TRAKSA.CTIONS OF THE [nOV. 1, 



The Report of the Council was received and adopted, which 

 recommended the payment of a bill, and the election of Rev. 

 SxErHEN D. Peet, of Clinton, Wisconsin, as a Corresponding 

 Member, and of the following persons as Resident Members : 



Rev. Anson P. Atterbury, 



Mr. Augustin P. Bjerregaard, 



Mr. James S. Gibbons, 



Mr. Johannes Roeloffs, 



Mr. Orlin Mead Sanford. 

 Mr, L. E. Chittenden, in continuing the discussion of the 

 subject of earthquakes, following the paper read by the president 

 at the meeting of October 18th, made observations upon a large 

 number of celebrated earthquakes and their phenomena, with a 

 view to some generalizations as to their causes. 



After citing numerous reports given by Herodotus and Pliny, 

 showing the frequency of such convulsions, but hardly mention- 

 ing any details, Mr. Chittenden passed over the long period of 

 the middle ages, in which there is but little recorded, and 

 beginning with the close of the seventeenth century, gave brief 

 accounts of some of the most important earthquakes among the 

 many since then known. Those of 1692 in Jamaica, of 1693 in 

 the East India islands and in Sicily, and of 1699 in Java, all 

 extremely destructive, were mentioned. An outline was given, 

 of the phenomena attending the well-known earthquake at 

 Lisbon in 1755, which convulsed a tenth part of the earth's 

 surface, reaching the great lakes of America, the West Indies, 

 Scotland, Sweden, and the Baltic. 



Mr. Chittenden briefly referred to the earthquake of 1762, 

 central near Bengal, where sixty square miles of earth sank into 

 the sea, of Java in 1772, where four thousand feet in height of a 

 mountain were truncated; of Calabria in 1783, with its terrible 

 details, continuous for nearly four years; of Sumbawa in 1815, 

 attended by volcanic explosions heard one thousand miles away, 

 and affecting all the islands within a radius of three hundred 

 miles; of Cutch in 1819, where ever two thousand square miles 

 sank permanently, and a new and navigable outlet of the Indus 

 was formed; and those of Ischia in 1828 and 1882. 

 Like reference was made to some of the typical American 



