That occasionally there are signs attendant on earthquakes, although we cannot give them a physical explanation, we cannot doubt. Also we know that in certain areas earthquakes are more likely to occur at one season than at another. Should earthquakes be foretold with the assistance of knowledge of this description, the predictions at once become the result of the application of certain natural laws, and are not to be regarded as predictions in the popularly accepted sense of that term, any more than the arrival of a friend is predicted by the previous receipt of a telegram announcing his coming. Rather than accredit the ancients and those of more modern times who, in consequence of their feelings, have recorded the coming of an earthquake, with a knowledge of premonitory signs, we might in many instances regard the records of those prognostications as the survival of accidental guesses, and, as such, examples of the survival of the useless. The effect of accidental occurrences of this description upon an uneducated mind, in engendering superstition, is a subject which has often been dwelt upon, and the difficulty of eradicating the same—as may be judged of by the following accident which came under the observation of Mr. T. B. Lloyd and the author, in 1873, when travelling in Newfoundland—will be easily appreciated. At the time to which I refer, my companion was bringing a canoe down the rapids below the Grand Pond in a country which is practically uninhabited, and where an Indian trapper would perhaps be the only person met with, and this not more than once a year. Whilst shooting the rapids one of the Indians, Reuben Soulian, shot at a deer passing up one bank of the river. That the deer had been hit was testified by a trail of blood which bespattered the rocks. Subsequently several more shots were fired, and it was believed by all that the deer was killed. Soulian quickly followed the animal to the spot where it was supposed to have fallen. Some time after he returned, having failed to find any trace of the animal. He was greatly agitated, but eventually became melancholy, saying that the sudden disappearance of the animal was a sure sign that some of his relations had suddenly died. About two hours afterwards Mr. Lloyd’s party met with a party of Indians coming up the river, the first they had seen for four weeks, who told them that Soulian’s sister had just died on the coast. In the northern part of South America certain shocks are anticipated by preliminary vibrations which cause a little bell attached to a T-shaped frame (cruz sonante) to ring. There are, however, persons (trembloron) who are supposed to be endowed with seismic foresight, whose verdicts are much relied upon.