which he had worked out in the course 

 of his journeys and excursions from Cam- 

 bridge over the southern counties of 

 England. As this stratigraphical work 

 was continued through the rest of his life 

 I shall consider it in detail after first 

 dealing with the portion of the paper 

 more immediately concerned with the 

 cause and phenomena of earthquakes. 



i. The Cause and Phenomena of 

 Earthquakes 



The attention of the civilised world 

 was strongly drawn to the long series of 

 earthquakes which culminated in the 

 appalling catastrophe that overwhelmed 

 Lisbon and shook the greater part of 

 Europe on ist November 1755. Many 

 accounts of the facts as well as attempted 

 explanations of them were printed in the 

 current literature of the time. In par- 

 ticular, the Royal Society devoted the 

 forty-ninth volume of the Philosophical 

 Transactions to a large collection of 



