September 9, 1897] 



NATURE 



445 



N 



small portion of the crops has been destroyed by sand and mud, 

 but nothing like the amount that was supposed at first. Here every 

 house and structure that was built of stone was simply shaken to 

 pieces; but the buildings were neverintended tostand earthquakes, 

 and when one sees the kind of structures they are, great shapeless 

 lumps of stone laid in very inferior mortar, one is not surprised 

 that they all came down, though it is doubtful whether the best 

 of masonry would have stood the shock. In the cemetery huge 

 slabs of granite or marble have been jerked several inches out 

 of their places. It has been most interesting work investigating 

 the results of the shock. I have not yet heard what opinion 

 my colleagues, who have gone out in various directions to make 

 observations, have formed about the cause of the shocks ; but 

 my own opinion is that they are due to movement along a line 

 of fault running along the southern side of tl;ie Khasia and 

 Garo Hills, from near Cachar on the east to and beyond the 

 Bramahputra. If you look at the map of Assam you will see 

 that the southern boundary of these hills is a very straight line. 

 The rocks are bent down suddenly along this line in a uniclinal 

 curve, and to the south of it the plains of Sylhet and Lower 

 Bengal are certainly a region of subsidence. If I should prove 

 to be right, it will be a most interesting case of earth-movement 

 on a large scale. I believe also that the ' Barisal guns,' which 

 have been a puzzle for so many years, are connected with the 

 same movement, and are caused by slight slips, not sufficient to 

 cause actual shocks of earthquake. The sounds one hears here, 

 sometimes accompanied or followed by a shock, but sometimes 

 also without any shock, are exceedingly like the ' guns.' 



" At the beginning of the week I put up here a roughly con- 

 structed seismograph for observing the shocks, which still con- 

 tinue, though they are gradually getting less violent and less 

 frequent than at first. The instrument is in principle, I believe, 

 due to Prof. Ewing, of Tokio, and gives a trace of the horizontal 

 movement of a point on the surface of the earth on a piece of 

 --'1 ' " ' From this it is easy to take prints on a piece of 



sensitised paper, 



— ~ -T , and I send you 



someof the results 

 ' (one of the prints 

 is here repro- 

 duced] I have al- 

 on . <7 / ready obtained. 



' ' The trace is mag- 



5 ■ iO a 7^ M^fe^ nified67 times by 



the instrument, so \ 

 that one can form 

 an idea from it of 

 how exceedingly 

 minute the actual 

 movement of the 

 - surface is, and yet 

 the two taken in 

 the morning of the 19th were fairly severe shocks. The first, 

 at 1.39 a.m., wag a very sudden bump, and was soon over ; 

 but the other, at 6.50 a.m., lasted some fifteen to twenty seconds. 

 This instrume^nt cost altogether about dd. to put up ; I am 

 making another rather more carefully, which will be looked 

 after by the Public Works Engineer here when I leave. 



" The house I u.sed to live in is perfectly flat on the ground. It \ 

 is wonderful that so few people were killed ; but the first shock 

 came at a time of day when most people were out of doors, and 

 only two Europeans were killed and about ten natives, who were 

 all in the Government Press building, the only house of more 

 than one story in the place. If it had happened at night, or at 

 the same time next day, when many of the people would have 

 been at church, there would have been great loss of life. I am 

 going on from here to Cherrapungi, where the damage has been 

 very great, chiefly caused by landslips, and then back to 

 Calcutta through Sylhet." 



The Centipede-Whale. 

 I AM very much desirous of being informed by you, or some of 

 yoiir readers, what animal is meant by " Scolopendra Cetacea," 

 which, according to Johnston, has only been described by .Elian : 

 " Scolopendrae vim et naturam, . . . quoddam etiam maxi- 

 mame cetos marinum eam esse audivi, quam de mari tempest- 

 atibus in litus expulsam nemo foret tam audax, quin aspicere 

 horreret. li vero qui res maritinias percallent, eas inquiunt toto 

 capitespectari eminentes c mari : et narium pilos magna excelsitate 



.^ 



NO. 1454, VOL. 56] 



apparere, et ejus caudam similiter atque locustae latam perspici : 

 : reliquum etiam corpus aliquando in superficie aequoris spectari, 

 idque conferri posse cum triremi instae magnitudinis, atque per- 

 ! multis pedibus utrinque ordine sitis, tanquam ex scalmis appensis, 

 natare. Addunt harum rerum periti ac fide digni, ipsos etiam 

 fluctus ea natante leviter subsonare." ( " De Natura Animalium," 

 lib. xiii. cap. 23.) In Gesner's " Historia Animalium," lib. iv., 

 Francfort, 1604, p. 838, a figure is given of this animal said to 

 have been seen in India. 



That the Japanese of old had some notion of such an animal 

 is well shown in Kaibara's " Vamato Honzo " (1708, torn. xiii. 

 f. 41, b.), where it is said : " The Mukade-Kujira [ = Centipede- 

 Whale] is as large as a whale, and has five fins on the back and 

 a two-cleft tail. Its legs number twelve, six being on each side ; 

 its flesh is coloured red and very venomous, man being killed 

 when he eats it." 



Here I may add that Olaus Magnus's " Cetus Barbatus," which 

 is assimilated with the "Scolopendra Cetacea " in the book of 

 Gesner {iit stipr., and figured on p. 207), appears to be but an 

 exaggerated portrait of some huge Cephalopod ; and also that 

 I was lately told by Captain Miura, of the Fuji, of his having 

 experienced a serious illness in con.sequence of eating flesh of a 

 gigantic cuttlefish in the Pacific Ocean. 



KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. 

 15 Blithfield Street, Kensington, W., August 30. 



THE APPROACHING TOTAL ECLIPSE OF 

 THE SUN.^ 



VI. 



T N the third article under the above heading, when 

 -^ referring to the suggested programme for the 

 observations of the next eclipse, I stated briefly the di- 

 vergent views held with regard to the true locus of origin 

 of the absorption which produces the Fraunhofer lines. 

 It is, I think, worth while to return to this subject in 

 order that the results obtained from the double series of 

 photographs obtained during the eclipse of 1893 may be 

 indicated. I pointed out that in the photographs in 

 question the radiation spectrum was most distinctly not 

 identical with the Fraunhofer spectrum ; the most im- 

 portant point being that some of the strongest bright 

 lines do not appear among the dark ones in the solar 

 spectrum, while some of the strongest dark lines are not 

 seen bright in the spectrum of the stratum of vapours 

 in immediate contact with the photosphere. The region 

 covered by the diagram, given in my paper in the Phil. 

 Trans.., lies between wave-lengths 4100 and 4300, but 

 similar results follow when other regions are included in 

 the inquiry. 



These positive conclusions are not weakened by the 

 consideration that the resolving power of the prismatic 

 cameras employed in 1893 is not sufficiently great to 

 show all the lines of the Fraunhofer spectrum, which is 

 used as a term of comparison ; in fact, working under 

 exactly the same conditions as during the eclipse, the 

 instrument employed in Africa only shows 104 lines in 

 the spectra of stars resembling the sun, in the region h 

 to H, in place of 940 given in Rowland's tables of lines in 

 the solar spectrum. We, therefore, get a better term of 

 comparison if we employ the spectrum of some star such 

 as Arcturus, which closely resembles the sun. Such a 

 comparison is shown in Fig. 24 ; out of 104 lines which 

 the instrument is capable of depicting in the region h to 

 H, only 40 are shown m the spectrum of the base of the 

 sun's atmosphere. This comparison amply confirms the 

 conclusion that the lines reversed at the beginning or end 

 of totality, though fairly numerous, do not correspond in 

 intensity, though some of them correspond in position 

 with the dark lines of the solar spectrum, and conse- 

 quently that the so-called "reversing layer" close to the 

 photosphere is incompetent to produce, by its absorption, 

 the Fraunhofer lines. Further, as previously pointed out, 

 while the chromosphere fails to show most of the lines 



1 Continued fr.ni p. 395. 



