EARTHQUAKES. 243 



The mythical legends of the Chinese refer to similar 

 views, which appear also in the Babylonian and Persian 

 cosmogonies. The Chaldeans taught that when the 

 planets are all conjoined in Capricorn the earth will 

 be overwhelmed by a flood, and that when a conjunc- 

 tion of this sort takes place in Cancer the earth will 

 be destroyed by fire. 



In the present age when the network of telegraphy 

 brings all parts of the earth into close intercommuni- 

 cation, we are not likely to trace, even in the most 

 wide-spread disasters, the approaching destruction of 

 our globe. The same day which brings the intelligence 

 of some desolating catastrophe brings evidence also 

 that the devastation is but local. We are seldom 

 informed of simultaneous, or nearly simultaneous, 

 events happening in widely-separated regions of the 

 earth's surface. Accordingly, we are seldom led to 

 dread the occurrence of any widely-devastating series of 

 catastrophes. 



But certainly events have happened during the past 

 few months which might lead nervously-disposed 

 persons to imagine that the inhabitants of the earth 

 are not perfectly safe from wide-spread destructive 

 agencies. The same week that brought news of the 

 great hurricane which ravaged the West Indian Isles 

 brought also the account of destructive hurricanes in 

 the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Then followed the 

 series of earthquake shocks which have inflicted such 

 injury on the already much-tried inhabitants of St. 

 Thomas, and which still continue to be felt at intervals. 



E 2 



