March 26, 1885] 



NA TURE 



483 



annually nominated by the Council and appointed by the 

 General Committee for the purpose of considering these 

 applications, as well as for that of keeping themselves 

 generally informed of the annual work of the Corre- 

 sponding Societies, and of superintending the preparation 

 of a list of the papers published by them. This Committee 

 shall make an annual report to the General Committee, 

 and shall suggest such additions or changes in the List 

 of Corresponding Societies as they may think desirable. 



" (4) Every Corresponding Society shall return each 

 year, on or before June I, to the Secretary of the 

 Association, a schedule, properly filled up, which will 

 be issued by the Secretary of the Association, and which 

 will contain a request for such particulars with regard to 

 the Society as may be required for the information of the 

 Corresponding Societies Committee. 



" (5) There shall be inserted in the Annual Report of 

 the Association a list, in an abbreviated form, of the papers 

 published by the Corresponding Societies during the past 

 twelve months, which contain the results of the local 

 scientific work conducted by them ; those papers only 

 being included which refer to subjects coming under the 

 cognisance of one or other of the various sections of the 

 Association. 



"(6) A Corresponding Society shall have the right to 

 nominate any one of its members, who is also a member 

 of the Association, as its delegate to the annual -meeting 

 of the Association, who shall be for the time a member of 

 the General Committee. 



" Conference of Delegates of Corresponding Societies 



" (7) The Delegates of the various Corresponding 

 Societies shall constitute a Conference, of which the 

 Chairman, Vice Chairmen, and Secretaries shall be 

 annually nominated by the Council, and appointed by 

 the General Committee, and of which the members of 

 the Corresponding Societies Committee shall be ex officio 

 members. 



" The Conference of Delegates shall be summoned by 

 the Secretaries to hold one or more meetings during each 

 annual meeting of the Association, and shall be em- 

 powered to invite any member or associate to take part 

 in the meetings. 



"The Secretaries of each Section shall be instructed to 

 transmit to the Secretaries of the Conference of Delegates 

 copies of any recommendations forwarded by the Presi- 

 dents of Sections to the Committee of Recommendations 

 bearing upon matters in which the co-operation of Corre- 

 sponding Societies is desired ; and the Secretaries of the 

 Conference of Delegates shall invite the authors of these 

 recommendations to attend the meetings of the Confer- 

 ence and give verbal explanations of their objects and of 

 the precise way in which they would desire to have them 

 carried into effect. 



" It will be the duty of the Delegates to make them- 

 selves familiar with the purport of the several recom- 

 mendations brought before the Conference, in order that 

 they and others who take part in the meetings may be 

 able to bring those recommendations clearly and favour- 

 ably before their respective Societies. The Conference 

 may also discuss propositions bearing on the promotion 

 of more systematic observation and plans of operation, 

 and of greater uniformity in the mode of publishing 

 results." 



UNDERGRO I WD NOISES HEARD A TCA/J/AN- 

 BRAC, CARRIBEAN SEA, ON AUGUST 2b, 1883 

 THE following letter describes certain underground 

 1 noises heard on the day of the great eruption of 

 Krakatoa, in a little island of the Carribean Sea, very 

 near the antipodes of the Sunda Strait. It is possibly an 

 interesting instance of propagation of sound through the 

 whole diameter of the earth. I shall first translate the 



letter of my correspondent, then add some explanatory 

 remarks : — 



" South of Cuba, in 8o° long. W., and 2o ; lat. N., the 

 three little islands, Great Caiman, Little Caiman, and 

 Caiman-Brae, are inhabited by a population of tortoise 

 fishermen ; there are also a life-boat station and Lloyd's 

 agent. These islands are indeed in the path of the great 

 cyclones of the Antilles, and they witness many ship- 

 wrecks. 



" In the month of September 18S3, as I was in the 

 island Utila, near the coast of Honduras, we heard the 

 first news of the great eruptions of Krakatoa, and talking 

 about those tremendous cataclysms, I met Capt. Robert 

 Woodville, who had just received a letter from the 

 Caimans ; he told me what follows : — 



" On Sunday, August 26, the inhabitants of Caiman- 

 Brae were astonished by a noise like the rolling of a 

 distant thunderstorm ; the sky was fine, and they at first 

 thought it was a skirmish between a Spanish cruiser and 

 some Cuban smugglers. On the south side of the island 

 nothing was to be seen ; they ran across the island, and 

 northward all was quiet too ; no smoke nor ship was in 

 sight. The cannonade still continued, and going back 

 again they recognised that the noise came from under- 

 ground. They were much afraid, and expected their 

 island would soon subside in the sea, or be turned into a 

 volcano. By degrees the detonations ceased, and their 

 fears were quieted. But the phenomenon was not for- 

 gotten, and was still talked about when the first news of 

 the Krakatoa eruption came. They made the remark 

 that the Caimans and Sunda Strait are nearly at the 

 antipodes of each other, and the hypothesis of a correla- 

 tion between the two phenomena was propounded. . . . 

 " (Signed) Edmund Roule t " 



I will not be too sanguine, and accept without criti- 

 cism so abnormal a fact of the propagation of under- 

 ground sounds from Krakatoa to the Caimans through 

 the whole mass of the globus ; but I will try to 

 show the reasons which tell in favour of such a bold 

 hypothesis, and lead me to accept it provisionally. There 

 are, it seems to me, plausible grounds for admitting that 

 the subterranean noises heard at the Caimans were the 

 repercussion of the explosions of the great Krakatoa 

 eruption : — 



(1) These noises heard at the Caimans did not come 

 from one of the numerous volcanoes of Central America : 

 if a great eruption had been known on the same day, the 

 inhabitants of Caiman-Brae and Utila would have found 

 out for themselves the co-relation between the two pheno- 

 mena. From the nineteenth catalogue of C. W. C. 

 Fuchs {Mineral. Mitth v. Tschermak, vi. 1S5, 1884) we 

 know of the following eruptions which happened in the 

 summer of 1883. The < motepec, an insular volcano in 

 the middle of the lake Nicaragua, was in eruption on June 

 19, opening a new crater, and giving way to abundant 

 lava streams ; in the month of August the lavas were 

 still burning. Cotopaxi (in the State of Ecuador) h?d at 

 the end of August (the exact time is not given) a short, 

 but very strong eruption, accompanied by violent earth- 

 quakes. I cannot, however, believe that a great eruption, 

 with noises audible at a distance of 1 100 to 2300 kilo- 

 metres, would not have been better noted, if it had taken 

 place on the same day as the great eruption of Krakatoa. 

 This last event has been enough talked about over the 

 whole world to call attention to such a coincidence if it 

 had really existed. 



(2) As to the explanation of the Caiman noises by an 

 unnoticed submarine eruption in the vicinity, I have only 

 to state that the great Antilles are not a volcanic region : 

 the nearest volcanic regions arc the Little Antilles and 

 the west coast of Central America, both which are too 

 far to allow such an interpretation of the noises heard at 

 the Caimans. 



