192 PLEASANT WA YS IN SCIENCE. 



was equal to at least a fourth of Europe, and probably to 

 fully one-half. From Quito southwards as far as Iquique 

 or along a full third part of the length of the South American 

 Andes the shock produced destructive effects. It was also 

 distinctly felt far to the north of Quito, far to the south of 

 Iquique, and inland to enormous distances. The disturbing 

 forces which thus shook 1,000,000 square miles of the earth's 

 surface must have been of almost inconceivable energy. If 

 directed entirely to the upheaval of a land region no larger 

 than England, those forces would have sufficed to have 

 destroyed utterly every city, town, and village within such a 

 region ; if directed entirely to the upheaval of an oceanic 

 region, they would have been capable of raising a wave which 

 would have been felt on every shore-line of the whole earth. 

 Divided even between the ocean on the one side and a land 

 region larger than Russia in Europe on the other, those 

 Vulcanian forces shook the whole of the land region, and sent 

 athwart the largest of our earth's oceans a wave which ran 

 in upon shores 10,000 miles from the centre of disturbance 

 with a crest thirty feet high. Forces such as these may fairlv 

 be regarded as cosmical ; they show unmistakably that the 

 earth has by no means settled down into that condition of 

 repose in which some geologists still believe. We may ask 

 with the late Sir Charles Lyell whether, after contemplating 

 the tremendous energy thus displayed by the earth, any 

 geologist will continue to assert that the changes of relative 

 level of land and sea, so common in former ages of the world, 

 have now ceased ? and agree with him that if, in the face of 

 such evidence, a geologist persists in maintaining this 

 favourite dogma, it would be vain to hope, by accumulating 

 proofs of similar convulsions during a series of ages, to shake 

 the tenacity of his conviction 



" Si fractus illabatur orbis, 

 Impavidum ferient ruinae. " 



But there is one aspect in which such mighty sea-waves 

 as, in 1868 and again in May, 1876, have swept over the sur- 

 face of our terrestrial oceans, remains yet to be considered. 



