142 



For example, within the hist few years, upon reading at fif- 

 teen different times of the faUing of a meteorite in some region 

 where Mr. Blank had found the specimen, I have written to 

 Mr. Blank. In twelve out of fifteen cases my letter was re- 

 turned from the post office marked 'no such person known at 

 this office,' From the other three letters nothing was heard." 



F. C. Baker. — "The Chicago papers described a case of heads of 

 mammoths which was put on exhibition at the Chicago Academy 

 of Science, as an interesting collection of humming birds." 



R. M. Bagg. — "There is interest in determining the causes 

 of the earthquakes which occur in the great Mississippi region, 

 V. region looked upon as practically free from siesmic action. 



These earthquakes may be possibly accounted for by suppos- 

 ing that they are due to crustal disturbance through faulting 

 due to depression of the Gulf of Mexico through loading of 

 sediment carried by rivers emptying into the Gulf, especially 

 the Mississippi river, which deposits each year one subic mile 

 of sediment 268 feet high in the gulf. This causes continual 

 sinking though not the initial subsidence. The erosion of the 

 Mississippi valley and deposit southward in the gulf may cause 

 readjustment of equilibrium through faulting as Mr. Savage 

 and members of Geological Survey know and have shown on 

 their maps of the State. These earthquake movements may be 

 reasonably expected to recur from time to time, due to read- 

 justment and an attempt of the crust of earth to regain isos- 

 tatic conditions." 



/. A. Udden: — With regard to the reliability of newspaper 

 data, they must be taken for what they arc worth and should be 

 used with common sense discretion. .Much of the material 

 collected for this study was not used. The character of the 

 isoseismals, based on separate determinations of intensities of 

 the earthquake for a hundred localities, speaks well, it appears 

 to me, for the reliability of the data used. The use of such 

 data in the study of earthquakes is nothing new. In the nature 

 of the case, the isoseismals below seven in a scale of ten are 

 largely located on hearsay evidence for all earthquakes which 

 are studied. Such data are necessarily obtained from untrained 



