The Causes and Phenomena of Earthquakes. 81 



weeks after, news arrived that at the time of the shock, "White 

 Island, north of New Zealand, was in eruption. 



The shock of 18th June, 1868, I recorded in the Herald as 

 occurring at about fifteen seconds before midnight, by my watch, 

 which was at my side, as I was reading. At gun time that day, 

 the watch was just 15 seconds too slow. Consequently, I con- 

 sider it occurred exactly at midnight. This agrees very nearly 

 with the "Windsor observations, allowing for longitude. On 

 feeling the shock I took the bearing by compass of the point at 

 which the shock entered my room. My son was at the time 

 writing in a lower room, and on the same line of bearing indicated 

 by me above, one window of three in the room, was so violently 

 shaken that he rushed out to see whether some one was trying to 

 enter the house. 



The direction in this case was nearly the same as that in 1841, 

 and taking into account the agitation of the sea and all the 

 circumstances as well as the great extent, more than 40,000 

 square miles affected, there can be no doubt, that it was a shock 

 propagated, from the north and east, and we may perhaps, hear 

 soinetning of a contemporaneous eruption in that direction. 



It may be well to add, tha': this concurrence of direction in 

 the shocks of 1841 and 1868 is quite in accordance with the 

 deduction from the 7000 earthquakes enumerated by Perrey and 

 Mallet, the latter of whom points out in one of his reports that 

 in places subject to frequent earthquakes, "they generally 

 come to one and the same place from the same point of the 

 compass." (Report, B.A., 1850, p. 18.) 



It is stated that the shock at Windsor was felt from the south, 

 and, as correspondents writes to me, at Newcastle from the 

 north-west, and at Raymond Terrace from the south, it is 

 quite impossible to reconcile these different points of local dis- 

 turbance with any single source, and if these observations be 

 correct, there must have been more than one shock. But, not- 

 withstanding these inferences, it is very clear that the shock at 

 Raymond Terrace must have come from the N.E., for the blow 

 was felt at the south corner of the house, (i. e., from S.W.) as it 

 passed away. The north-east wall of Mr. Bolding's house ap- 

 peared to be falling outwards, a result of the undulations, which 

 as pointed out by Lyell (Principles II. 138) cause buildings to 

 fall generally backwards rather than forwards, i. <?., contrary to 

 the direction of the earth wave. I am informed, a shock was felt 

 earlier in the evening at Maitland, and one still earlier in Port 

 Jackson, and another on the Murrumbidgee. And if the 

 notices inserted in the Victorian papers relating to a singular 

 and long continued noise heard at Beaufort on the 5th July 

 and vibrations at G-eelong on the 24th, be correct, coupling 

 them with the noises at Lake Greorge on 10th and 11th 

 K 



