STUART : THEt SRIMANGAL EARTHQUAKE OF 8TH JULY 1918. 
Vibrations which could be felt continued for more than five minutes, 
and while the vibrations were greatest buildings and trees could 
be seen swaying slightly and the motion of the floor in the Ob- 
servatory at Alipore was quite distinctly visible. The time-clocks 
in the Observatory were all affected more or less. Some stopped 
altogether, but, what is more interesting, the pendulums of two 
of the clocks instead of beating seconds began to vibrate very 
rapidly and indicated 2 or 3 seconds in a period which was not 
longer than one second. This made the clocks apparently go 
fast, and the best clock in the Observatory, which has during 
the last three years not varied its rate by more than a few 
hundredths of a second, gained more than 2| minutes during an 
interval of less than 10 minutes. This clock is fixed to a north 
and south wall and its pendulum swings in the meridian. This 
clock happened to be recording its time against a time-signal 
from Madras just when the earthquake was on, and thus an 
actual record of the irregular beating of the clock against the 
regular seconds beats from Madras has been obtained, showing that 
at one point the Calcutta clock beat three seconds while the Madras 
one only gave one second. After the earthquake all the clocks in 
the Observatory were wrong and complete reUance had to be placed 
on the time given by the chronometers, all of which had remained 
unaffected. Unfortunately the night was cloudy and it was only 
at four o'clock in the early morning that a few stars could be 
obtained for transits. These transits showed that the standard 
clock, which had gone almost perfectly for the last three years, 
had suddenly gained 2 minutes 38 "8 seconds during the earth- 
quake." 
The following extracts relate to damage to buildings : — 
" Not a great deal of serious damage was done, but ominous cracks 
appeared in several new and old buildings in and about Clive 
Street. In Messrs. Gillanders Arbuthnot & Co.'s offices a crack 
eight inches long occurred on the second storey, just above the 
main entrance ; and the north-east corner of the Chartered Bank 
was cracked for about ten feet. At the old Telegraph Office, a 
zig-zag crack about fifteen feet in length appeared almost under 
the tower facing Old Court House Street, and the Currency Office 
showed a 12 feet-forked crack over the Mission Row entrance. 
The Calcutta Town Hall, the upper floor of which is utilised as 
a home for soldiers and the ground-floor for the Municipal Magis- 
trate's Court and offices, suffered from the earthquake." There 
are also cracks occurred in the walls 
The New Municipal Market in College Street showed a considerable 
crack over the entrance on Harrison Road." 
" In Howrah a one-storeyed house next-door to the Howrah Roman 
Catholic Church in Cullen Place, came down within a few minutes 
of the upheaval ; while a number of huts were razed to the 
ground." 
