66 The American Geologist. January, 1894 
lives, seventeen thousand were wounded, and two hundred and seventy 
thousand buildings were leveled with the plain, while six thousand 
houses, less shattered by the shocks, were burnt down by tire. Engi- 
neering works, such as canals, bridges, dams, embankments, railroads, 
were involved in the great destruction. 
Seventeen separate quakes had already been recorded by the seismo- 
graph in October, prior to the 28th, all, however, confined to the vicin- 
ity of Tokyo. Central Japan, where the devastation was wrought, had 
remained quiet, and afterward, to the close of November, no less than 
1,757 earthquakes were recorded at Gifu and 884 at Nagoya, and down 
to the end of March, 1892, 2,588 at Gifu and 1,093 at Nagoya. The great 
excess at Gifu indicates unmistakably that this city lay nearer to the 
urigin of the convulsion than Nagoya. 
There was no volcanic outbreak, but an enormous fissure was found 
to cross the country, "cutting hills and paddy fields alike," throwing the 
soft earth into enormous clods and ridges, which could be traced in a 
northwest-southeast course along the Neo valley for a distance of forty 
miles. "It starts from about the village of Katobira, not far from Kat- 
suyama, on the bank of the Kiso-gawa, on the Nakasendo, running 
northwestwards up to Fukui, in Echizen, through the Neo valley.'" 
This fault is supposed to have pre-existed, and a renewed movement 
along substantially the same plane of fracture, is believed to have been 
the prime cause of the earthquake. There was a vertical movement, 
and at the same time a horizontal shifting. Large amounts of earth 
slipped from the mountain sides, so that practically the sides of the val- 
ley had slidden into the river. In the upper part of the dale the greater 
part of the mountain slopes,had "slipped away, carrying with them the 
forests they were covered with." The author describes, with illustra- 
tions, the phenomena observed by him throughout the course of this 
fault line. While these landslides characterized the course of the fault 
in the hilly districts, in the plains great undulatory waves of disturb- 
ance threw the surface into tumultuous confusion. The jelly-like nature 
of the alluvial region served to perpetuate the shocks and to multiply 
them, and to allow the permanent sinking of large areas which became 
at once filled by some of the streams that crossed the region, submerg- 
ing farms and villages. 
Text Book of Geology. By Archibald Geikie, Director-General of 
the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland. Third edition, 
revised and enlarged, 8vo, cloth, pp. xvi and 1147, maps and many text 
illustrations. Macmillan and Co., London and New York, $7.50, 1893. 
No text book of geology can long supply the demands of advanced geo- 
logical students without revision. The progress of the science is rapid, 
and new text books and manuals appear with rapid succession. This 
edition contains 150 pages more than the last, and the improvements, 
which are found in all parts, bring the work substantially up to the 
present condition of the science. There are two characteristics which 
this work presents. First, its order of arrangement consists of a 
