450 C. Davison — British Earthquakes of 1890. 



a few salient facts, which might be greatly multiplied. They seem 

 to establish that the American Cordillera, like the Highlands of 

 Eastern Asia, form a very new feature in the physical history of the 

 world. They show that their upheaval dates very largely from 

 post-Tertiary times, that it was very rapid, if not sudden, and that 

 it caused a widespread diluvian movement, to which we must 

 attribute the destruction of a large part of the Pleistocene fauna, 

 and the spreading of the great mantles of unstratified loam in the 

 Pampas of South America, and the Loess districts of the North. 



III. — On the British Earthquakes of 1890, with the exception 



OF THOSE felt IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF INVERNESS. 



By Charles Davison, M.A., 

 Mathematical Master at King Edward's High School, Birmingham. 



THE most remarkable earthquakes of the year 1890 were those 

 felt in the district round Inverness between November 15 and 

 December 14. These have been described in a separate paper.^ 

 The remaining earthquakes were of comparatively slight intensity. 

 Two or three were felt during the night of June 25-26 within 

 a very small area to the north-east of Leeds, and one at least in 

 Kintyre on July 24. Several slight shocks at Invergarry and 

 Eeddan, in Inverness-shire, complete the list so far as known to me, 

 with the exception of a doubtful shock at Tulliallan in Perthshire 

 on January 6. 



It is hardly necessary to do more than refer here to the two 

 supposed earthquakes felt on January 7 at and near Chelmsford. 

 In a letter to " Nature," ^ I have given the evidence in full ; and it 

 appears to me sufficient to show that they were merely the reports 

 of one of the great Woolwich guns. The reasons of this conclusion 

 are, briefly: (1) exactly at the times given (12h. 30m.' and 13h. 

 25 m.), a 110-ton gun, .iihe heaviest in the service, was fired at 

 Woolwich ; (2) the wind was S.W. over nearly the whole of 

 England on the day men'*^*oned, and all the places from which I 

 have received records are -.ose to a line passing in a north-easterly 

 direction from Woolwict ., and (3) the descriptions of the shocks 

 show that they were due to impulses transmitted through the air 

 rather than through the earth. 



Yorkshire Earthquakes : June 25-26. 



a. June 25, about 22 h. 30 m.; Intensity, IV.; Epicentrum, about 



half a mile N.E. of Walton. 

 &. June 26, about Ih. 



First Shock: June 25, about 22h. 30m. — I have received records 

 of this shock from 19 places, which, with two exceptions, lie within 

 an area about 11^ miles long and 7 miles broad ; the direction of 

 its longer axis being about W. 17° N. and E. 17° S. The boundary- 



1 Eead before the Geol. Soc. on June 24. 



3 "Nature" (Feb. 20, -1890), vol 41, p. 369. 



