GENERALIZATIONS CONCERNING EARTHQUAKES 55 



had been released to the north by the San Francisco 

 quake of 1906, might be still accumulating to the 

 south, but few if any of them agreed with him that the 

 site of the next release could be specifically in South- 

 ern California within a definite time limit, between 

 three and ten years from now, or that it would be of 

 undue severity. 



Alas! even the deductions of Science are not infal- 

 lible, for as I will presently show the very fundamentals 

 of the above theories have been discredited by the 

 fact that the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which after 

 re-computation of the figures previously given, has an- 

 nounced that instead of having moved twenty-four 

 feet to the north in thirty years, "the new position of 

 Gaviota Peak is approximately four and a half feet 

 southeast by east from the old one" and that "the 

 changes in position reported in Bulletin 106 were 

 due to triangulation errors and not to actual earth 

 movements except for some of the stations." See 

 Plate VII. 



THE COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY 

 REVISES ITS DATA 



During the past year the writer had heard rumors to 

 the effect that the Coast Survey had questioned the 

 accuracy of its own determination as above stated, and 

 had for some time been engaged in recomputing the 

 data. On October 26, 1927, it occurred to him to send 

 a telegraphic inquiry to the Survey at Washington for 

 the exact facts. The telegram as sent and its responses 

 of startling importance were as follows: 



