EARTHQUAKE OF OCTOBER, 1870. 561 
“loose” ossicles, such as carpals, tarsals, teeth, etc. The num- 
ber of spinal vertebrae, is also variable, but not that of the cranial 
ones. 
The vertebral blocks, as well as the ribs, are the product of the 
primitive axial series of (intervertebral) discs, which, when com- 
pletely arrayed, each bear five branches, viz.: two pair of hemal 
arches, two pair of neural arches, and a fascicle of parallel cleets, 
so to speak, which being cemented together, both in the front and 
rear, by the superficial ossification of the discs at either end are 
fused into the block pieces, as found, e. g., in the young hog; the 
cementing slab covering the big neural rib head likewise, and 
not only the pentagonal prismatic block. The first disciform 
ossification we find in the corals, forming cribrose ethmoidal discs, 
such as the closely set “ sigillate impressions” of the Astraea, and 
afterwards left behind as the coccyx, e. g., of Cyathophyllum. 
On tHe EARTHQUAKE or OCTOBER, 1870. — By Cor. CHARLES 
WHITTLESEY. 
Tue writer confined his attention to what he pronounced the 
only remarkable feature of the earthquake, which was its occur- 
rence at far distant points almost at the same moment of absolute 
time. Out of thirty odd observations made at as many different 
points in the United States, four were known to be accurate to 
within fifteen seconds, so that the total error could not exceed 
thirty seconds. Making the necessary allowance for difference 
of longitude, it occurred at Cleveland, Ohio, at 10 hours 43 min- 
utes 30 seconds; at Albany, New York, 10 hours 43 minutes 9 
seconds; at Boston, Mass., at 10 hours 43 minutes and 25 sec- 
onds; and at Bangor, Maine, at 10 hours 43 minutes and 19 
seconds. The difference, therefore, was only in seconds. The 
ordinary rate of progression of earthquakes is from twenty to 
thirty miles an hour; while this one, if it progressed at all, must 
have moved at the rate of a thousand miles an hour. The paper 
was intended to raise the question: What kind of an earthquake 
as it! : 
Professor MCCHesNEY asked whether the author of the paper had given 
any attention to the subject in connection with the repulsion theories of 
Dr nslow of Boston. 
Colonel WanrrtLESEY stated that he had made very little progress toward 
a theoretical explanation of the phenomenon; he believed, however, that 
