478 THEORY OF EARTHQUAKES—MAURY. 
pelago, all te!] the same tale. Great oceanic cisterns, with copious 
supplies of moisture at all times ready to follow the grading 
surfaces of tilted rock strata are near them all. 
The same is true of the scenes of our most noted earthquakes. 
Their law of distribution confines them to the vicinity of large 
bodies of water. I need only remind you of those which have 
occurred at Lisbon, in the south of Italy, in the valley of the 
Mississippi, at Charleston, on the South American shores of the 
Pacific, and in Japan. 
I note in this connection, as shewing on a small scale the per- 
colating power of water, an interesting fact mentioned in Brown’s 
“Coal Fields of the Island of Cape Breton.” He relates that 
“in working the main seam of the Sydney Mines, some years 
ago, the sea water found its way into the exploring levels which 
had been pushed out underneath the water of the harbor. It 
percolated through a thickness of 300 feet of strata,” and insisted 
on pursuing this course so persistently, that, in spite of strong 
dams built to bar the entrance of the enemy, the mine had to be 
abandoned. 
Besides all this, it appears to me, that while those who 
advocate the crust contraction theory, are persons entitled to 
great respect, the phenomena of earthquakes have characteristics 
which are better explained by the other theory. In the first 
place they are marked by great suddenness :—and secondly, in the 
case of the majority of the more important, they have not that 
duration which might naturally be expected, if they were the 
result of any such extremely gradual and continuous process 
as the cooling and contraction of the earth’s crust must be. 
They are emphatically explosive. Lisbon and Caraccas were 
both destroyed in less than five minutes; and I am constrained 
to believe that such phenomena are fairly illustrated on a small 
scale by the slag explosions at New Glasgow. 
