It has, indeed, been well pointed out by Sir Charles Lyell that ‘the general tendency of subterranean movements, when their effects are considered for a sufficient lapse of ages, is eminently beneficial, and that they constitute an essential part of that mechanism by which the integrity of the habitable surface is preserved. Why the working of this same machinery should be attended with so much evil, is a mystery far beyond the reach of our philosophy, and must probably remain so until we are permitted to investigate, not our planet alone and its inhabitants, but other parts of the moral and material universe with which they may be connected. Could our survey embrace other worlds, and the events, not of a few centuries only, but of periods as indefinite as those with which geology renders us familiar, some apparent contradictions might be reconciled, and some difficulties would doubtless be cleared up. But even then, as our capacities are finite, while the scheme of the universe must be infinite, both in time and space, it is presumptuous to suppose that all sources of doubt and perplexity would ever be removed. On the contrary, they might, perhaps, go on augmenting in number although our confidence in the wisdom of the plan of nature might increase at the same time; for it has been justly said’ (by Sir Humphry Davy) ‘that the greater the circle of light, the greater the boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded.’ (From the _Cornhill Magazine_, March 1868.) _THE EARTHQUAKE IN PERU._ The intelligence published last Saturday (see date of article) is sufficient to prove that the great earthquake which has devastated Peru fully equalled, if it did not surpass, the most terrible catastrophes which have ever befallen that country. It presents, too, all the features which have hitherto characterised earthquakes in this neighbourhood. These are well worthy of careful study, and appear to have an important bearing on the modern theory of earthquakes. It has been commonly held that the seat of disturbance in the earthquakes which have shaken the country west of the Andes has lain always at some point or other beneath that range of mountains. The fact that several large volcanoes are found in the Cordilleras has seemed confirmatory of this view. The account we have also of the great earthquake at Riobamba in 1797, seems only explicable by supposing that the seat of disturbance lay almost immediately beneath that city. The inhabitants were flung vertically upwards into the air, and to such a height that Humboldt found the skeletons of many of them on the summit of the hill La Culca, on the farther side of the small river on which Riobamba is built. The ruins of many houses were also flung to the same spot. Here, therefore, was evidence of that vertical (or, as Humboldt expresses it, explosive) force which is only to be looked for immediately above the centre of concussion.