560 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
is a long avenue flanked on each side by rows of tall poplars. On 
one side of this road for a distance of about one hundred meters 
one of the rows was moved bodily about two meters out of line 
without tilting the tall trees. But the row on the other side of the 
road still preserves its alignment, and this local translation is due to 
a small ditch on the side toward which the trees moved and to the 
generally soft character of the soil here, the surface cracks being 
numerous and large. .. . 
“T do not believe that any great amount of work has been done 
by the Commission in an actual search for a rift im mountainous 
country. Where the railroad passes through the mountains, cracks 
were found and landslides, but these also were evidently local. A 
painstaking search through mountainous country might possibly 
bring to light some fault phenomena, though the task would be a 
difficult one owing to the amount of territory to be covered. That 
a long rift could have arisen without being noticed at some point 
seems, however, rather improbable, and it seems quite certain that 
no evidence has been found of such displacements in the populated 
districts of the plains and foot hills. Doubtless the resumé of 
results will make it better possible for you to judge whether further 
search would be likely to produce any results. 
“Very interesting data are available as to the periodicity of the 
maximum destructive effect, and I understand that such points will 
be treated in the final report of the Commission. A number of 
cases have been brought to my knowledge by Mr. S. E. Hyslop, No. 
1078 Huerfanos, Santiago: he is an electrical engineer and has had 
opportunity to make intelligent and valuable observations on such 
points. Near Catemu he found several particularly striking cases. 
Here there were long adobe walls running approximately N. E. by 
S. W. For quite a long distance pieces have been “bitten,” as it 
were, out of the walls. The pieces bitten out average 1.8 meters 
in length and their average distance apart is quite regular, averaging 
9g meters. Another wall in the same district gave a ‘period’ of 
7 meters. In the case of parallel walls bounding another road in 
the same district, the portions thrown down average 2 meters in 
length and are about 8 meters apart. The road is 10 meters wide 
and the destroyed portions are not even but displaced along the road 
by about 17 meters. The road runs N. E. by S. W. 
“Tnstances of this sort could be multiplied, but will doubtless be 
treated in the Report of the Commission.” 
