Records of Earthquakes 249 



1896. Feb. I3th, 438th meeting. Professor John Milne 1 

 (a guest) described some photographic records of earthquakes 

 which he had obtained at Shide, Isle of Wight, from a 

 horizontal pendulum. This, from time to time, showed 

 sudden movements. As these might be due to local earth- 

 quakes, he intended to compare their records with those 

 from an apparatus which would be set up at Carisbrooke. 

 Earthquakes originating in Europe and other distant 

 places were also noted. Occasionally tremor-storms lasting 

 from ten to seventy hours occurred, which so far blurred 

 the photogram as to obliterate a separate record ; the rate 

 at which the film was moved being too quick for obtaining 

 satisfactory diagrams of diurnal tilting. He hoped that 

 instruments, equivalent to that at Shide, would be estab- 

 lished at about fifteen stations round the world ; their 

 chief object being to determine the rate at which earthquake 

 motion is propagated, not only round the earth but possibly 

 through its interior. 



April 23rd, 440th meeting (49th anniversary). Sir Joseph 

 Hooker exhibited a small instrument made for measuring 

 sections of plants. It was on the plan of a pair of propor- 

 tional compasses, but so arranged that the distance between 

 the pointed ends is recorded by the opposite end of one of 

 them on a scale attached by a pivot to the other limb. 2 



May 7th, 441 st meeting. Dr. Sclater described the way 

 in which the eggs of the Surinam water-toad (Pipa americana) 

 were deposited on the back of the female, observations 



1 Professor John Milne, who founded seismographic observatories in 

 Britain and made most important contributions to seismology, was born 

 in Liverpool, Dec. soth, 1850, studied at the School of Mines in Jermyn 

 Street, and then in Cornwall, after which he undertook work in Newfound- 

 land, Labrador, and the Peninsula of Sinai. In 1872 he obtained a post 

 under the Japanese Government, and on his way to take up this, crossed 

 Europe and Asia from England to Shanghai. A prolonged period of 

 earthquake disturbances in Japan enabled him to study their phenomena, 

 on which he wrote some valuable memoirs. Returning to England in 

 1 895, he settled at Shide (Isle of Wight), where he established an observatory, 

 devising instruments for registering secondary shocks, and recording, 

 classifying, and publishing his observations. (See an excellent biography 

 in the Geological Magazine, 1912, 337.) He died July 3ist, 1913. 



1 A pen-and-ink sketch of the instrument is inserted in the Minutes. 



