472 
been surpassed for violence and extent by any 
of which there is historic record. An area of 
150,000 square miles was laid in ruins, all 
means of communication interrupted, the hills 
rent and cast down in landslips, and the plains 
fissured and riddled with vents from which sand 
and water poured out in most astounding 
quantities, causing floods in rivers, while a sur- 
rounding area of 1,750,000 square miles felt an 
unusual shock. The earthquake wave is esti- 
mated to have traveled at the rate of 120 miles 
aminute. The amplitude of wave motion near 
the epicenter was probably 14 inches, and the 
velocity of wave motion was probably 14 feet a 
second. It is suggested that the shock may 
have been caused by a slight movement on a 
thrust plane, thus accounting for the compres- 
sion indicated by kinks in railways, and by a 
slight diminution of north-south distances indi- 
cated by a revision of former triangulation. 
Two hill stations seem to have been lifted by 
about 20 feet over their former altitude. A 
number of surface faults are described and fig- 
ured, one of which had a throw of 25 feet and 
a length of 12 miles, and another a throw 
of 10 feet and a length of two and one-half 
miles. The greater fault produced a waterfall 
in the Chedrang, and obstructed the Krishnai 
so as to form a lake several miles in extent, 
flooding a village and killing a forest of not less 
than 50,000 sal trees. At acertain pointin the 
Himalayan foothills, the steep slopes have been 
stripped bare by landslides from crest to base, 
the valley bottoms being piled up with débris 
and broken trees, producing a scene of in- 
describable desolation. At this point the land- 
slides usually left a sharp and bare ridge- 
line, but the crest of one ridge retained a 
narrow strip of its old forest, although the 
trees were all broken down by the violent 
oscillations that they suffered. Many streams, 
that once consisted of a succession of deep 
pools and rocky rapids, have been so charged 
with sand from landslides that their valleys are 
aggraded and they now flow in broad, shallow, 
sandy channels. A narrative account of the 
earthquake has been published by H. Luttman- 
Johnson (Jour. Soc. Arts. xlvi, 1898, 473- 
493). 
W. M. DAVIs. 
~ SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Vou. XIII. No. 325. 
BOTANICAL NOTES. 
TREES OF THE NORTHERN PLAINS. 
A RECENT preliminary list of the seed-bear- 
ing plants of North Dakota, by Professor 
Bolley and L. R. Waldron, throws some light 
on the woody vegetation of the northern por- 
tion of the Great Plains. An examination of 
this interesting list confirms the supposition 
hitherto entertained that the species of trees 
are fewer in number as we go north from the 
central region, there being but twenty-eight, or 
possibly twenty-nine, different species in the 
region covered by it. A closer study of the 
list shows that of these twenty-nine species of 
trees less than twenty attain to such dimensions 
as to make them important timber trees, viz.: 
basswood, sugar maple (a doubtful native spe- 
cies), red maple (more probably silver maple), 
box elder, red ash, green ash, white elm, red 
elm, hackberry, western red birch, ironwood, 
bur oak, black willow, almond willow, American 
aspen, large-toothed aspen, balsam poplar, 
cottonwood and red cedar. The other trees 
are wild red plum, Canada plum, wild red 
cherry, choke cherry, buffalo berry, two haw- 
thorns, speckled alder, low bur oak and sand- 
bar willow. Of the timber trees, constituting 
the first list, box elder, red ash, green ash, 
white elm, hackberry, cottonwood and prob- 
ably black willow aad almond willow occur 
throughout the State ; basswood, both maples, 
red elm, ironwood, both aspens and balsam 
poplar are found only in the eastern counties ; 
bur oak in the eastern half of the State; 
western red birch in the Turtle Mountains 
(along the Canadian border), and red cedar in 
the foothills of the southwestern portion of the 
State. The absence of locusts, sycamores, 
hickories, walnuts, white oaks, red oaks and 
pines is a notable feature of the arborescent 
vegetation of this portion of the plains. 
SHRUBS OF THE NORTHERN PLAINS. 
THE preliminary list referred to above shows 
that there are in North Dakota forty-four species 
of shrubs, a small number when compared with 
areas of approximately equal extent elsewhere 
in the United States or Canada. Thus in Ne- 
braska, which is but very little greater in area, 
there are eighty-six species of shrubby plants. 
