296 HOBBS— THE EVOLUTION AND THE [April 24. 



tration of the distant as well as the nearer and local earthquakes. 

 These stations should be well distributed over the national domain, 

 and should include a number of stations of the first rank provided 

 with the more sensitive type of pendulum adapted to the registration 

 of distant earthquakes. A larger number of stations of lower rank 

 should be provided with simpler instruments suited only for secur- 

 ing full data upon the local shocks. These smaller stations should 

 be located with due regard to the more important seismic provinces 

 of the country. The United States Weather Bureau already 

 possesses suitable buildings for installing such apparatus, and the 

 regular employees of the stations could be trained to add the care of 

 the instruments to their other duties. In 1907 with the hearty 

 approval of the heads of the various scientific bureaus of the govern- 

 ment, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 upon recommendation of its Committee on Seismology, memorialized 

 Congress upon the pressing need of such a service. A year later, 

 the Geological Society of America passed a resolution of similar 

 import, and in the same year, no positive result having been secured, 

 the Committee on Seismology renewed its first memorial by a second 

 resolution.*''^ 



Scientific research has already gone far to remove some of the 

 greatest scourges of human existence. Of those which are char- 

 acterized by sudden and usually unexpected visitation, are pestilence, 

 flood, conflagration, earthquake and volcanic eruption. Of these 

 flood and conflagration must be in part laid at the door of earth- 

 quake disturbances, to which they have all too frequently been an 

 almost inevitable sequel. They have, moreover, taken the larger 

 toll of human life and property. As compared with epidemic 

 diseases, like the plague and smallpox which repeatedly overran 

 Europe during the middle ages, earthquakes and their consequences 

 have been the less destructive of life. It has been estimated that 

 in Europe, the plague alone carried of¥ no less than 25,000,000 

 people. Yet medical science has discovered the mystery of the 

 disease, and in sanitation and isolation provided the remedy. To 

 meet the great dangers of conflagrations, which from time to time 



"" See also the resolution passed by the American Philosophical Society 

 on April 24, 1909. Proceedings No. 191, p. xii. 



