790 Transactions of the American Institute. 



agents, and on which Mr. Buckle has given some vi\ad ehicidations, 

 though he has not touched on this specific point. It is hardly neces- 

 sary to remark that the accumulation of wealth (and consequently 

 the progress of civilization which is dependent thereon), cannot but 

 be retarded by convulsions that, like these late ones, overwhelm cities, 

 destroy harbors, obliterate mines, etc. But, in addition, the sense of 

 insecurity of property which comes over men in countries liable to 

 frequent visitations of these scourges must relax industry, and unnerve 

 ambition, and by creating a belief in the futility of human exertion, 

 prepare the mind to fall a prey to demoralizing superstitions. It is thus 

 that, in the lamentable accounts which come to us of the late earth- 

 quake, we have reports of how the image of a saint called " Senor 

 del Mar " was carried to the sea in the belief that it would prevent 

 the inundations, and of flocks of people following a ])adre down to 

 the ocean to see him command the waves to retire, and then being 

 overwhelmed themselves by thfer flood. 



It is a difterent lesson altogether that science teaches. Why the 

 "working of the mechanism of our planets is attended with so much 

 evil is a mystery bej^ond philosophy ; but we do know that these 

 tremendous convulsions are a part, and in the large sense even a bene- 

 ficent part, of the general scheme, that, in the fine language of Lyell, 

 " the earthquake itself, although so often the source of death and 

 terror to the inhabitants of the globe, visiting in succession every 

 zone, and filling the earth with monuments of ruin and disorder, is 

 nevertheless the agent of a conservative principle above all others 

 essential to the stability of the system." 



These actions and reactions incessantly proceed. They have made 



the world what it is. Modern geology has banished the old notion 



of sudden cataclysms ; of a time when nature 



" Wanton'd in her prime and played at will 

 Her virgin fancies." 



For the causes now at work are adequate to account for all cosmic 

 changes, and the earthquake is an illustration of agencies which have 

 given tlie form to our globe, which now continue to modify it, and 

 which, in the future, are certain to subject its huge rondure to new 

 transformations in the cycles of unending change. 



A very animated debate followed the reading of Mr. Swinton's 

 paper, and several other causes of earth(piakes were suggested beside 

 those mentioned by Mr. Swinton, namely : The gradually cooling 

 and consequent contraction of the eai'th's crust ; the pressm-e of steam. 



