1882.] Earthquake Commotion and Sun Spots. 
i57 
VII. THOUGHTS ON MY NEWLY-COMPLETED 
TABLE OF EARTHQUAKE COMMOTION AND 
SUN SPOTS. 
By A. H. Swinton. 
it 
u\iy HO that has been brought up in wholesome dread of 
yyr the three books of Euclid, logarithms of China, and 
two calculi of our Gallic neighbours, but experiences 
a most dreadful qualm when an astronomical topic is mooted. 
And truly the present state of physical science, as displayed 
by a good text-book on the subject, is by no means cheery or 
inviting to a naturalist. As in ancient days an attempt to 
solve the apparent motions of the heavens ended in a Gordian 
tangle of spheres, circles, and triangles, so I am much afraid 
now-a-days nature bids fair to be eclipsed under a blur of 
conic seditions, values of the function of x, long columns of 
figures, and a most terrible nightmare of micrometers, 
frightful to our eyes as was that picture of the torture of the 
wicked in a burning sun, that nightly awoke before the old 
monk’s conscience in the arcanum of his mediaeval crib. 
Indeed, this spring, when I wrote, unwittingly and in the 
form of conjecture, a partially correct statement of the con- 
nexion that exists between the periods of seismic disturbance 
and the sun spot periods, to the editor of the “Daily News,” 
I had then not the slightest idea that some weeks thence, I 
should find the whole of this much perplexed subject 
resolving itself back into that beautiful image of natural 
harmony and proportion that every lover of science kindles 
at the sight of. 
No surer does the shadow on the wall, or hand on the dial- 
plate, mark in turn the time-honoured numerals of the 
Romans than do these black spots on our sun’s disc indicate 
the periods when the face of the globe is to be convulsed by 
the cycle of volcanic eruptions and earthquake tremors. 
Maximum and minimum, minimum and maximum, they 
recur, back to the time when Columbus opened up the great 
physical history of a New World. 
From this date, indeed, we first really see the round world 
as it actually is, and gain power to generalise and tabulate 
these disturbances ; and by so doing, we not not only find 
that we are enabled thereby to construct a seismic table, but 
we likewise gain a pretty exaCt idea of the sun spot wax and 
