At first sight, two earthquakes could hardly be more unlike than the Japanese earthquake of 1891 and the Inverness earthquake of 1901. In the rice-fields of central Japan, as we have seen, the roads for many leagues were edged with ruins, the fault-slip was prolonged up to the surface and visible as a scarp forty, if not seventy, miles in length, plots of ground were compressed and their boundaries altered, the hillsides were scored by landslips, places can now be seen from one another that formerly were hidden by a mountain ridge, and the total number of after-shocks within little more than two years amounted to above three thousand. On the other hand, when we examine the distribution of the after-shocks in space, we find that, though no part of the fault was exempt from slips, they favoured three regions in particular--one, the most important, a central region, yet not coincident with that in which the principal shock was most intense; and the other two surrounding the extremities of the fault. With the lapse of time, the after-shocks on the whole became weaker and occurred less frequently, and the average depth of the foci gradually diminished. Moreover, in two districts distant forty-five and fifty-five miles from the fault, the frequency of the shocks during the month succeeding the earthquake was suddenly increased to ten and sixteen times the normal rate. It is interesting to notice so close a similarity in character, subsisting with so vast a difference in the scale of intensity. The identity of the powers at work in shaping the structure of both islands Is manifest. In Japan, we see the mountain-making forces acting with violence and producing effects that are only too apparent to the eye. In Scotland, whatever may have happened in former geological epochs, the changes in surface-structure are now taking place with almost infinite slowness, and hundreds or thousands of years must elapse before Loch Ness makes any visible progress in its march towards the sea. REFERENCES. 1. DAVISON, C.--_The Hereford Earthquake of December 17, 1896._ (Birmingham, 1899.) 2. ---- "The Inverness Earthquake of Sept. 18, 1901, and its accessory shocks." _Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc._, vol. lviii., 1902, pp. 377-397. FOOTNOTES: [61] The study of the Hereford earthquake is based on 2,902 records, coming from 1,943 places; that of the Inverness earthquake on 710 records from 381 places. [62] The disturbed area of the Hereford earthquake of 1896 was probably greater than that of any other British earthquake of the nineteenth century; that of the Pembroke earthquake of 1892 being more than 56,000 square miles, of the Pembroke earthquake of 1893 about 63,600 square miles, while that of the Essex earthquake of 1884 (a far stronger shock in the meizoseismal area) is estimated at about 50,000 square miles.