H. P. Malet—On Earthquakes. 77 



All these cases, and many more might be added, illustrate the 

 subsidence of the upper strata into the water-bed; if the phenomena 

 had been caused by the contraction of the cold crust, as so many 

 imagine, the water must have gone down through the cracks of that 

 contraction; if, on the contrary, they had been caused by the sub- 

 sidence and shrinkage of the earth's exterior, as asserted by Mr. 

 E. Mallet, Spectator, 5th October, 1872, into the "retreating nucleus," 

 then again there would necessarily be fissures below the water run, 

 and, as there would be no force to eject it, all the water on the site 

 must of necessity have gone down ; so that there is no escape from 

 the conclusion that earthquakes may originate in the mass of matter 

 overlying the water-bed, and that they have no necessary connexion 

 with volcanoes. Earthquakes that happen without water ejection 

 are by no means dependent on any igneous action, or on any con- 

 traction of the earth-rocks below, as the following example will 

 show: — On the 17th March, 1871, an earthquake was reported in 

 the lake districts. The Times, of April 3rd, admitted a letter saying, 

 that this earthquake was attended with " a concentrated hissing 

 sound." On the 25th March the Kendal Mercury printed a letter 

 which thus explains the phenomenon : — " We had a dry summer last 

 year, our springs sank unusually low, our winter snow and late 

 rains have now percolated into the strata above the subterranean 

 water-levels, and the extra weight of the water has forced these 

 strata into the beds or cavities below," — an action corresponding to 

 what we have said, and one that must of necessity force out the air 

 or gases, which had collected in the empty water runs, the hissing 

 sound depending on the character of the orifice through which it was 

 expressed. It will be understood that this expulsion of air is pre- 

 cisely similar to those actions, which eject gases from the surface in 

 many parts of the world ; though the subsidence which supplies the 

 force may be either sudden or slow. There are many instances 

 where other matter than water or air is acted on by landslips, sub- 

 sidences, or earthquakes. In the Under Cliff, Isle of Wight, and 

 near Folkestone, great masses of cliff have slipped bodily into the 

 black Gault below, and this mud, full of fossil-remains, has been 

 forced up through the crevices, and in great masses, along the face of 

 the broken cliff, where it joins the sands of the sea-shore. At a 

 considerable distance from that line, at Folkestone, a ridge was 

 forced up on the sands near low-water mark, equal in length, and 

 parallel to tlie landslip. Tides and waves had nearly obliterated this 

 ridge, when we examined it, but the sheet of black Gault which had 

 been forced down the water runs was still visible in places, of varied 

 thickness ; explaining how sheets of one material become inter- 

 stratified with other materials, for which science has as yet found no 

 explanation. The elevation of the line of sea-shore in Chili, in 

 1822, and the upheaval of the Ullah Bund, in India, in 1819, are 

 both actions of a similar nature, and no similar elevation of the 

 surface earth can be attributed to any other cause, than a corre- 

 sponding subsidence ; so that in all these and in many more instances 

 we confirm the opinion of Professor Haughton, who said of other 



