834 
signed and discordances noted. It may be, 
however, that the plates will later prove 
more useful than was anticipated in this 
direction. Certainly a comparison would 
be interesting with the Harvard Arequipa 
plates, on which Bailey has detected nu- 
merous variable stars, and the periods of 
some might thereby be accurately fixed. 
A chapter of the work, in parallel Spanish 
and English, is devoted to each cluster, 
furnishing all the necessary data of measure- 
ment, the relative positions, and comparison 
with other, visual, measures where existent. 
Excellent charts are given of all the clus- 
ters. At the time of the lamented death of 
Dr. Gould, a year ago, one-half (pp. 248) 
of the volume had been printed, and the 
computations of the remainder were practi- 
cally complete. But the unfinished portion 
of the manuscript has been carefully pre- 
pared after the original plan by Mr. G. E. 
Whitaker, to whom Dr. Gould makes ac- 
knowledgment for ten years of efficient 
service, under the general supervision of 
Dr. S. C. Chandler, and the whole volume 
may be fairly ‘regarded as coming complete 
from the hand of its author.’ 
Epwin B. Frost. 
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, 
CURRENT NOTES ON PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
THE ASSAM EARTHQUAKE OF JUNE, 1897. 
_ A REPORT on the earthquake of June 12, 
1897, in the Province of Assam has lately 
been published by the government of India 
in the form of a number of letters from local 
officers, English and native. The shocks 
occurred in the Khasi hills, famous as the 
district of the heaviest known rainfall; they 
are ascribed to faulting, entirely independ- 
ent of volcanic action, of which there was 
no trace. Many ancient monolithic monu- 
ments were broken, or even torn out of the 
earth; their previously undisturbed condi- 
tion being taken as evidence that no such 
earthquake had visited the region since 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. VI. No. 153. 
their erection. In many villages the heay- 
ier houses were thrown down or badly in- 
jured, and had not most of the inhabitants 
been out of doors after a rainy morning the 
loss of life would have reached a greater 
number than is now reported, 1542. Among 
the hills much damage was done by land- 
slides occasioned by the shocks; hillside 
paths were thus carried away, villages de- 
stroyed, and many people killed in the val- 
ley fields. In the plains to the south many 
deep cracks and crater-like pits were opened. 
One of the cracks was a mile long, two or 
three feet wide and 16 feet deep. Two per- 
sons lost their lives by being engulfed in 
such cracks. The pits average six feet in 
diameter and are spread around with sand 
that was thrown out by jets of water. In 
the Sylhet plains, traversed by numerous 
water courses, most of the villages are on 
the belt of higher floodplain close to the 
streams, and there much loss was caused 
by the slipping of the banks into the chan- 
nels. Cholera and fever followed the earth- 
quake, by reason of the disarrangement of 
water supply and drainage. 
THE MOODUS NOISES. 
A CORRESPONDENT of the New York Sun 
states that the “‘ famous and mysterious dis- 
turbances of the lower Connecticut valley, 
the ‘Moodus noises,’ are being heard 
again’? after a silence of twelve years. 
The Indians knew of them before the com- 
ing of whitemen. For twenty years, up to 
1729, the villagers thereabouts heard the 
noises almost continuously, ‘shaking the 
houses and all there is in them.’ They 
were again heard in 1852 and 1885. On the 
recent recurrence there was a sound like a 
clap of thunder, followed for some two 
hours by a roar like the echoes of a distant 
cataract. A day later there was a crash- 
ing sound like heavy muffled thunder, and 
a roar not unlike the wind in a tempest. 
The ground was shaken, causing houses to 
