Earthquakes and the Seismograph. 



Last Autumn your lyibrarian.Mr. Klotz, wrote to me asking 

 whether I would lecture before this Society on the subject of the 

 seismograph ; and as I felt myself honoured by the invitation, and 

 at the same time feeling a d.eep interest in seismological investiga- 

 tion, I replied in the afhrraative. It was not, however, until some 

 time afterwards, when I received from your President the pro- 

 gramme of lectures for the season, that I realized that I had 

 undertaken to give a lecture with a title which would certainly 

 lead an audience to suppose that they were to hear something 

 about the causes which produce earthquakes, as well as an account 

 of the nature and character of the seismological investigation in 

 which our Canadian Meteorological Service is taking part. 



I was certainly somewhat appalled at the task allotted me, 

 especially as I conceive that seismic phenomena are most certainly 

 very closely allied to many geological problems ; it required some 

 nerve to lecture on such a subject in Ottawa, the home of the 

 greatest and best known geologists of our country. I hope, how- 

 ever, that I shall be able to give you a fairly clear conception as 

 to the causes some of which produce quakes, and can certainly in- 

 dicate to you some of the methods now followed by seismologists 

 in the intensely interesting researches in which they are engaged. 

 But few of the opinions advanced in the paper can I claim as my 

 own, and I have drawn largely on those of Prof. Milne, Dr. C. 

 G. Knott, and Dr. Agamennone, men who are making seismic 

 phenomena a life study. 



There are no manifestations of the forces of nature more 

 calculated to inspire us with awe than earthquakes ; few agents 

 have been more destructive in their effects, and to the real dangers 

 which follow these terrestrial convulsions must be added the 

 feelings of uncertainty and dread which arise from the fact that 

 the earth on which we live may at any moment be the agent of 

 our destruction. Even the feeble shocks which at infrequent in- 

 tervals are felt in portions of our Dominion produce in people a 



