THE CAUSES OF EARTHQUAKES. 515 



my friends, for I could not bring myself to speak to any one of the 

 dreadful foretaste of the hereafter I firmly believed I had experienced. 

 On one of these occasions, when I felt myself falling from life, I saw a 

 great black ocean like a rocky wall bounding the formless chaos into 

 which I sank. As I watched in descending the long line of towering, 

 tumultuous waves break against some invisible barrier, a sighing whis- 

 per by my side told me each tiny drop of spray was a human existence 

 which in that passing instant had its birth, life, and death. 



" How short a life ! " was my unspoken thought. 



" Not short in time," was the answer. " A lifetime there is shorter 

 than the breaking of a bubble here. Each wave is a world, a piece of 

 here, that serves its purpose in the universal system, then returns again 

 to be reabsorbed into infinity." 



" How pitifully sad is life ! " were the words I formed in my mind 

 as I felt myself going back to the frame I had quitted. 



" How pitifully sadder to have had no life, for only through life 

 can the gate of this bliss be entered ! " was the whispered answer. " I 

 never lived — I never shall." 



" What are you, then ? " 



I had taken my place again among the living when the answer 

 came, a sighing whisper still, but so vividly distinct that I looked 

 about me suddenly to see if others besides myself could hear the 

 strange words : 



" Woe, woe ! I am an unreal actual, a formless atom, and of such 

 as I am is chaos made." 



THE CAUSES OF EAKTHQUAKES. 



By M. DAUBE^E, 



or THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 



THE causes of earthquakes have long been the subject of many 

 conjectures. The numerous investigations of later years have 

 contributed much to define their characters ; and several data recently 

 acquired tend further to make their mechanism clear. It is known 

 that the shocks are by no means distributed at hap-hazard over the 

 surface of the globe. The countries where the strata have preserved 

 their original horizontal position, like the north of France, a part of 

 Belgium, and the most of Russia, are privileged with tranquillity. 

 Violent commotions are manifested particularly in regions that have 

 suffered considerable mechanical accidents, and have acquired their last 

 relief at a recent epoch, like the region of the Alps, Italy, and Sicily. 

 The tracts that are simultaneously disturbed by the same shock 

 most frequently comprise arcs of from 5° to 15°, or from 300 to 1,500 

 kilometres. They rarely include a much more considerable fraction 



