150 NATURE 
LETTERS TC THE EDITOR. 
{Zhe Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions ex- 
pressed by his correspondents, Neither can he undertake 
to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejecier 
manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE, 
No notice ts taken of anonymous communications. | 
Earthquake in Guatemala. 
TuHouGH I have been a subscriber and devoted reader of 
NATURE for about twenty years, I have not hitherto troubled 
you with anycommunications. Now I think it will interest you 
to obtain some data about a very disastrous earthquake which 
recently shook nearly the whole of the republic of Guatemala 
and the neighbouring countries, destroying many towns and 
causing immense loss of property and of many lives. 
At 8.25 p.m. of April 18 an earthquake of more than thirty 
seconds duration affected a large part of Guatemala, eastern 
[JUNE 12, 1902 
machinery and the aqueducts ruined. The total number of 
lives lost may ‘be about 800 to goo. 
At the port of Ocos, only three houses remained standing and 
the big landing-pier was broken near the land. 
In the city of Guatemala most of the churches and some 
houses sustained slight damages ; the same happened in Antigua 
(Guatemala). Escuintla and Amatitlan suffered considerably. 
The railways between Retalhuleu and the port of Champerico, 
and the one between Ocos and Coatepec were interrupted by 
the falling of bridges and damage to the road. The railway 
between Guatemala and the port of San José remained unaffected 
and intact. 
In the eastern portions of Guatemala the shock was only 
weak. I was at the time on my plantation ‘‘ Germania,” and 
did not feel anything at all. 
Until May 5 earthquakes of small intensity were still frequent 
from the city of Guatemala to the west. 
A commission of engineers has been sent by the Government 
to Quezaltenango and San Marcos, to 
select new places for the rebuilding of 
S magn 
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: Chiguinnalilla 
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these towns. 
During the night of April 11-12 a 
severe thunderstorm did considerable 
damage to houses and other property 
at San Salvador, the capital of the 
republic of El Salvador, and at 7.25 
p-m. on April 16 a powder explosion 
blew up the military barracks at 
Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, 
destroying a number of houses and 
killing many people. I mention this 
because later on these events might get 
mixed up with the earthquake. 
EDWIN ROCKSTROH. 
Gualan (Guatemala), May 7. 
° . . . . 
Comayagua The Vibration of the Violin. 
I HAVE been taken to task for saying, 
in my little book on the violin, that the 
vibrations of the wood of the instru- 
ment ‘‘reinforce the tones of the string.’’ 
Perhaps some readers of NATURE may 
be able to point out whether I am guilty 
of an incorrect or merely unconventional 
statement. 
Briefly, I use the word “reinforce” 
Earthquake, 8.25 p.m., April 18. 
=ss<exe_ Jimits of Guatemala. 
awww Region of greatest intensity. 
--- — Region where buildings were destroyed. 
+ Quezaltenango. Towns completely destroyed. 
e Escuintla. Towns which suffered damage. 
v+eeeees Region from which notices’ about the earthquake have reached me. 
* Nenton. Places where the shock was felt distinctly. 
¥rom Chiapas there is only one report about Tapachula, and from Honduras about Comayagua. 
It is not possible to say how far to the east and to the west the movement was felt, 
Chiapas and western Salvador and Honduras. The intensity of the | 
movement was greatest in western Guatemala, where the second | 
and richest city of the country, Quezaltenango, was completely 
destroyed, with the loss of about 500 lives. Completely ruined 
also were Solola, San Marcos and its sister town San Pedro Sacate- 
pequez (more than 200 lives being lost), and the same happened 
to Retalhuleu and Mazatenango, important towns on the Pacific 
coast-plain, to the south of Quezaltenango. The places before 
mentioned are situated on the highlands, a little to the north of 
the great volcanoes. 
Besides the cities named, nearly every town and hamlet in 
the Departamentos of San Marcos, Quezaltenango, Retalhuleu, 
Suchitepequez and several in Chimaltenango are ruined, and 
perhaps every one of the many important coffee- and sugar- 
plantations in the western coast-region has had its buildings, 
NO. 1702, VOL. 66] 
in the fullest sense, or rather senses, of 
the term. There is, I take it, (1) a 
reinforcement of the tones of the string 
itself by vesonance ; and (2) a reinforce- 
ment (in the sense in which an army is 
reinforced by a regiment or battalion) 
consisting of the tones contributed by 
the vibrations of the pine and sycamore. 
The reinforcement of the sound of a 
brass band by cymbals would seem to 
supply another and more direct analogy. 
The tones of the string are no doubt by 
themselves very feeble, but not unim- 
portant when reinforced by resonance. 
If in the case of the violin we substitute 
for the ordinary gut string a string of, 
say, silk, we distinguish a slight, but 
quite perceptible, difference in the ¢émére of the instrument ; 
but this difference is not a measure of the intensities of the 
particular tones to which the difference is due. 
If I is the intensity of the fundamental tones of the two strings, 
37 the sum of the intensities of the overtones of the gut string, 
and 32’ the sum of the intensities of the overtones of the silk 
string, then what we distinguish in the consonant note of the 
instrument is 
(I + 32) — (I + 32’) 
=) S2— ese 
but we form no idea as to the absolute values of I, S¢ and 32’. 
We cannot, in fact, say in what proportion they contribute to 
the intensity of the consonant note of the instrument. 
(The difference observed in the ¢émére of the gut and silk 
strings is not, of course, necessarily due only to a difference of 
