194 D. 8S. Martin—Earthquake of December, 1874. 
any serious injury to buildings or property, though it caused 
much alarm and excitement for a time in various places, both 
to animals and men. 
The night was calm, mild, and somewhat cloudy, with no 
meteorological phenomena in any respect noteworthy. Several 
persons who had experienced earthquakes in South and Cen- 
tral America, referred to an intense and peculiar stillness of 
the atmosphere, just prior to the shock, which they had godin 
want to notice in a like connection in the tropics. This ¢ 
mstance is one frequently reported, and it may be aor 
emi here. 
It remains to speak briefly of certain ae circumstances, 
which suggest some interesting conclusion 
servers, few indeed, bat widely separated, 
and too many to admit of. error, accounts were received of on 
or more later shocks, at about two o'clock the same night. 
Two remarkable letters were a to the committee, detailing 
a marked disturbance of very similar character in eastern Mas- 
sachusetts, on the same afternoon between 5.30 and 6. This 
~— was ak at North Andover and at Salem, and in both 
ral members of a household. _dnaquiries from 
e 
Hampshire, and notices in the local papers, Ssiigaiisertad by 
the former, = to elicit any further information on this 
interestin 
In ‘ “Nature” Dee. 31st, 1874), a brief account is given of an 
earthquake shock experienced by thre e travelers who. were 
Pe the petks on the Pic du Midi, a lofty summit of the 
eal at 4.45 on the morning of Dec. 11th; 
and “ Nature” ks its simost ana coincidence in time 
with the shock felt ir in : North Am 
These several reports, scanty sboneh they are, made a strong 
impression on the writer's mind, which was referred to in his 
report to the New York Lyceum, —that the day was one of 
very wide and very deep-seated disturbance over a consider- 
able part of the Northern hemisphere. At that time the news 
from Iceland had not arrived; but we have since learned that 
beneath the crust, which found an outlet ere long in the great 
Icelandic eruptions 
