GEOLOGY AND MINEI5ALOGT. 299 



ties of bodies. Thus we say that vinegar possesses the secondary 

 quality of acidity, and a rose that of redness, because we suppose 

 that the stimuli which originated the organic affections, in apprehend- 

 ing which we felt the sensations of acidity and of redness, proceeded 

 from the vinegar and the rose respectively. We are entirely ignor- 

 ant what the secondary qualities in bodies are ; we only know the 

 affections of which they are deemed to be the stimulating causes. — 

 As the secondaries are revealed through sensation, and the primaries 

 through the perception of our material organism, so the secundo- 

 primariea are discovered (we said) by the resistance offered to the 

 movement of our organism in space. We are not conscious of this 

 resistance as proceeding from bodies ; but after we have been led by 

 induction to believe that it is exerted by bodies, we then reckon 

 resistance to be a quality of bodies. But is it a primary or a secon- 

 dary quality ? It partakes in some sort of the nature of both. As 

 a mode of resistance felt in us, it is allied to the secondaries. As a 

 degree of resistance opposing our locomotive energy, it resembles the 

 primaries, being like them objectively apprehended. It cannot there- 

 fore be placed under either of the two previous divisions ; but must 

 be constituted into a class by itself, viz : the class of secundo-prima- 

 ries. Every particular species of resistance or pressure which a 

 body is capable of exerting, against the movement of our organism, 

 or against any other body, is a secundo-primary quality of the body 



in question. 



G. P. Y. 



SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 

 GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 



EARTHQUAKES IN CALIFORNIA. 



la a paper by Dr. Trask, of San Francisco, published in the May number of 

 SiUimin's Journal, it is stated that the number of earthquakes experienced in 

 California in 1856, amounted to sixteen. The shocks, with one exception, appear 

 to have been compiratively slight ; and Dr. Trask (writing from San Francisco) 

 observes moreover, that along the coast of Mexico and Central America, to the 

 south of California, there seems to have been a much greater exemption fiom these 

 phenomena than has been usual in former years. This appears to have been the 

 fact also, throughout the Pacific, Oceanic, and most of the continental islands along 

 the coast of China; while, ou the contrary, to the north and northwest, beyond the 

 fifty-fifth parallel, both volcanic and earthquake phenomena appear to have been 

 of more than average intensity. Dr. Trask cites more especially, the neighbour, 

 hood of the Aleutian Archipelago, the north-east coast of Japan, the British and 

 Russian possessions of North America on the Pacific, and the islands of the Sea 



