32 
THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1884. 
the widened fissures are being filled up by the infiltration of solid 
matter, or that they are closing up by the slow settlement of the 
disturbed strata. At St. Peter’s Well, Mersea Island (a surface- 
well), the effect of the shock was to throw the water bodily out of 
the cistern, and for some hours afterwards the water ran in a turbid 
state. A very striking illustration of the wide extent of the sub¬ 
terranean disturbance is furnished from Canterbury, where on the 
morning of the shock the water from the Artesian borings 600 feet 
deep, which is always bright and clear, came up in such a turbid 
state that some of the tanks had to be emptied in consequence. 
In conclusion, I may mention two very interesting records which 
have only recently come to hand. One is from Leeds, 170 miles 
away from the centre of activity, where the shock was recorded on 
the tracing-paper of a self-registering barometer, the indentations 
on which indicated that the shaking lasted for about four hours 
after the initial shock, although the movement was too slight to be 
perceived by any one. The other record is from Crowborough in 
the Weald of Sussex, where a large equatorial telescope in Mr. 
Prince’s observatory, weighing about one ton, was displaced by 
the shock. 
The subject is surrounded by very great difficulties, and, being 
scarcely studied at all in this country, the observations taken upon 
this occasion have necessarily been of a rough and ready character, 
and have given my colleague and myself no small amount of trouble 
to sift; but nevertheless it has afforded me great pleasure to lay 
the principal results of our investigations before the members of 
the Hertfordshire Natural History Society. 
