Reports and Proceedings — Geologicdl Society of London. 425 



With the exception of the earthquake of 1621, which is even 

 contested, there have never been in the region anything but slight 

 sliocks, of which a portion are due to the * echo ' of earthquakes 

 at a distance. 



The depression utilized by the scheme of the Panama Canal is not 

 a transverse fracture. 



The depression of the Pacific coast, and especially the sinking in 

 of the Bay of Panama, in favour of which view there are numerous 

 indications, should not be regarded as phenomena in the course of 

 operation, but as phenomena actually effected, at any rate as regards 

 the actual geological period. In this there is no special cause for 

 mobility of the soil. 



Lastly, the position of the lines of folding, and the distribution, 

 according to these lines, of volcanic or seismic activity, show that 

 Panama is situated in a kind of dead angle, in a tranquil zone, at an 

 equal distance to the north and south of the last lines of disturbance. 



Thus, all these considerations, whether we regard them from 

 a statistical, a volcanic, or a tectonic point of view, lead to the same 

 result ; they allow us to conclude that Panama is the most stable 

 and the least threatened region of Central America. W. H. H. 



S-EIPOS-TS Ji^lSYlD I=K-OGEJ:E]IDIlNr<3S- 



Geological Society of London. 



June 18th, 1902.— Professor Charles Lapworth, LL.D., F.E.S., 

 President, in the Chair. The following communications were 

 read : — 



1. " The Great Saint-Lawrence-Champlain-Appalachian Fault of 

 America, and some of the Geological Problems connected with it." 

 By Henry M. Ami, M.A., D.Sc, F.G.S. 



The extent, earth-movements, and striking characteristics of this 

 fault-line and of the geological formations which occur along this 

 line of weakness in the earth's crust, with special reference to the 

 formations in British North America, were discussed. 



Recent investigations in the succession of faunas and geological 

 formations in Eastern Canada have emphasized the fact that those 

 formations whicli occur to the south and south-east of this great 

 dislocation are strikingly like the geological formations referable to 

 tlie same geological systems in Great Britain and Western Europe. 

 The fault, as it is traced to-day, appears to divide the geological 

 formations of the Maritime Provinces and Canada into two distinct 

 geological provinces — one, east of the fault, in which the several 

 formations resemble both lithologically and paleeontologioally the 

 British succession ; the other, to the west of this great fault, 

 where there occurs the typical American or epicontinental type of 

 succession. 



2. "The Point-de-Galle Group (Ceylon): Wollastonite-Scapolite- 

 Gneisses." By Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Esq., B.Sc, F.L.S., 

 F.G.S. 



