﻿xviii Proceedings. {December ijt/i, 1904. 



Ordinary Meeting, December 13th, 1904. 

 Mr. W. H. Johnson, B.Sc, in the Chair. 



The thanks of the members were voted to the donors of the 

 books upon the table. 



The following letter from Dr. Charles Davison, of Birming- 

 ham, on British Earthquakes, was read by the Secretary : — 



Dear Sir, 



During the last 16 years, I have been engaged in studying 

 the earthquakes of this country, the results of my work being 

 contained in papers published in the Quarterly Journal of the 

 Geological Society, and the Geological Magazine, and in my 

 report on the " Hereford Earthquake of December 17, 1896." 

 I propose now to carry the work backwards, so as to prepare as 

 complete a history of British earthquakes as may be possible at 

 the present day. To do this at all satisfactorily is, of course, 

 beyond the powers of one man. It requires access to the files 

 of the local newspapers. Records of past shocks may be pre- 

 served in private journals, and not a few are to be found in the 

 pages of county and parish histories or local magazines. These 

 sources are for the most part inaccessible to all but their owners, 

 and it is therefore only by the kindly aid of others that the 

 necessary materials can be procured. If any members of the 

 Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society should be able 

 and willing to contribute records, either from the sources men- 

 tioned above, or from their own recollections, of earthquakes felt 

 in any part of the country, but especially in Lancashire, such 

 help would, I need hardly say, be of the very greatest service in 

 my work, 



As a seismic district, Lancashire is one of the most important 

 in the British Isles, no English county having been disturbed so 

 often, and only three counties in Scotland more frequently, 

 during the last hundred years. The dates on which recorded 



