36 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
damage was most severe along the water-front where the aliuvial 
deposit and made-ground imposed the thickest layer of loose uncon- 
solidated material upon the bed rock. In this zone many buildings 
were completely levelled. Nearer the base of the cliff which partly 
separates the upper from the lower portion of the city, buildings stood 
with their walls cracked and cornices broken away but frequently 
otherwise safe for habitation. Upon the sloping ground above the line 
of cliffs where a superficial layer of weathered rock on the inclined 
surface had slipped down carrying buildings with it, and in the ceme- 
tery where similar conditions existed, the destruction was most pro- 
nounced. The reconstruction of the business houses along the 
incoherent ground of the water-front insures a recurrence of the tale 
of destruction when in the future the seismic movement affects in this 
vicinity the line of displacement which skirts the coast of Chile. 
From the studies of Dr. H. Steffen in the case of this earthquake the 
disturbance appears to have had its origin off Coquimbo, a sea-port 
198 marine miles north of Valparaiso. 
I was impressed with the fact that in a large number of the houses 
that were not completely destroyed the damage was at a maximum in 
the peripheral parts of the buildings; that though one or more of the 
outer walls were demolished or thrown outward, the internal walls 
and the inner angles of the floors were left standing in place unen- 
cumbered by fallen wreckage in such a manner that persons unable 
to leave these buildings would have escaped with their lives had they 
sought refuge during the height of the shocks in the internal corners 
of the rooms. I had occasion later to note instances of the same sort 
amid the ruins of Kingston, Jamaica, produced by the earthquake 
of January 14, 1907. It would seem advisable from this observation 
that houses in earthquake countries should be constructed with one or 
more sets of rectangularly intersecting, internal walls well united of 
materials whose period and amplitude of vibration as a mass is 
identical so that one end of the building will vibrate as nearly as 
possible in unison with the other. From the lack of this synchroneity 
and equality of lateral swaying the outer walls will probably be thrown 
off or toppled down but the central structure of buildings properly 
balanced, as numerous examples have shown, often stands and by a 
slight special construction adapted to the purpose, the internal angles 
of such intersecting walls might in many cases prove places of refuge 
and security. 
This Chilean earthquake, coming at a time when the people of the 
United States were preoccupied with the calamities of the similar 
