180 Kf:roRT— 1895. 



October 22, 1894, .1.20 p.m. Tliis shock, which created great destruc- 

 tion within an area not more than thirty miles in diameter round Shonai 

 on the N.W. coast of the main island, does not appear to have been recorded 

 by the Oray-Mihie seismograph in Tokio. 



The destruction it occasioned in the vicinity of its origin was enormous. 

 More than 300 people lost their lives, while in some respects the country 

 was more fissured and broken up than it was around Gifu in 1891, at which 

 time nearly the whole of Japan was sensibly shaken. Sand hills or dunes, 

 which have a breadth of 3,000 to 4,000 feet at their base, were fissured and 

 sunk along their crests for a breadth of between 200 and 300 feet, and these 

 openings extended for several miles. Fissures of great length were formed 

 in the plains, whilst water and sand were shot upwards, and ring-like 

 craterlets produced. One of the most curious phenomena was the till- 

 ing up of wells with sand, and the shooting upwards for a height of 

 several feet of their wooden linings. The after shocks were few in 

 number. 



Januaiy 18, 1895. At 10.48 p.m. on this date Tokio was again 

 severely disturbed, and from the feelings of the inhabitants it was difficult 

 to say whether the movement was more or less severe than that of June. 

 The fact that many buildings which escaped the latter shock were on this 

 occasion more or less shattered suggests the idea that the distribution of 

 movement throughout the city was somewhat different. 



The origin of the disturbance was apparently from 60 to 100 miles to the 

 north or north-east of Tokio, and from this centre the preliminary tremors 

 recorded by a seismograph outraced the main shock by 6 or 8 seconds. 

 Had the writing pointer of tlie seismograph recorded its movements pho- 

 tographically, it is likely that this interval would have lieen increasec?. 

 It will be of great importance to determine the interval between the 

 preliminary tremors and the elastic surface gravitational waves for this 

 shock as recorded in Europe. 



Owing to the number of destructive earthquakes which occurred prior 

 to the three here mentioned, so many observations have been accumulated 

 that up to the present no time has been available for their analysis. The 

 observations and notes collected by the writer relating to disturbances 

 which have taken place during the last few years, which in themselves 

 would have formed a voluminous report, were unfortunately destroyed by 

 a tire referred to in the next paragraph. 



2. Tlie Destruction of Books and Pamphlets rdathig to Seismology. — It 

 is with regret that I have to announce that on February 17 my house 

 and observatory were entirely destroyed by fire. The losses consisted of 

 collections of books, instruments, and other things accumulated during the 

 last twenty years, the stock of the Transactions of the Seismological 

 .Society, which at the time were packed ready for shipment to Europe, and 

 about 1,500 books and pamphlets relating to Earthquake and Volcanic 

 Phenomena. All that I saved was the clockwork of a new seismograph 

 and a bundle of photograms. The analysis of the latter forms the chief 

 portion of this report. 



3. Alterations in tlie Construction of Chimneys. — One effect of the 

 recent earthquakes in Tokio has been to cause householders to rebuild the 

 upper part of their chimneys with thin iron plate, while factory chimney.s 

 from 50 to 100 feet in height have for a length of 20 or 30 feet at about 

 two-thirds up from their base been strengthened with a series of strong 

 iron bands connected vertically by iron straps, it being observed that it 



