The lecturer here rolled forward to the front of the platform, a blackboard on which in colored chalks the earth, looking somewhat like a shortened egg, with its north and south poles situated on the long, flattened sides, was depicted; while a black line or axis drawn through it terminated in the Sahara Desert on one side, and near the Society Islands on the other. Two ominous circles in vermillion were described on it, concentric respectively with the ends of the black line, one sweeping along the western coast of North and South America, and crossing the Isthmus of Panama, the other encircling the coasts of Africa and gathering in their fatal course the Azores, Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands. And on both these terrifying curves, in black letters, was printed the hypnotic intimation “Belt of Weakness or Earthquake Ring.” The effect on the audience was sufficiently impressive. The staring rude drawing around which a cyclone of blue scratches, purporting to be clouds, was expressively raging, intensely steeped the observers in a spell of wonder and trepidation. Even Leacraft, by the contagion of a common obsession, craned his neck, and fixed his eyes with a stupid absorption upon the crazy and paradoxical diagram. The speaker continued, noticing with undisguised satisfaction the ocular concentration produced by his obnoxious figure, with its anomalous portents: “It is well known that we have in the boundaries, or shore lines of the Pacific, a surprisingly larger number of earthquakes recorded, than anywhere else in the world, and this seems in some way coincident with the prevalence of active volcanoes in the same region. Prof. Haughton has enumerated for the world 407 volcanoes, 225 of which are active. Of these latter, 172 are on the margin of the Pacific. Prof. Milne, who lived a long time in Japan, for the express purpose of studying the earthquake problem of those islands, has observed the surprising frequency of their earthquakes, and it is a volcanic zone they occupy. We have in contradistinction to this area about the Pacific a reversed circle which envelopes the western coast of Africa, and by this chart,” here the lecturer pushed back the blackboard, and, standing alongside of it, began, with a pointer of elucidation, a direct allocution to that subject of confusion, “we are made immediately cognizant of the opposite and yet symmetrical disposition of these zones. This should have from its simplicity and a quasi-permanency, in its phenomena--its earthquake phenomena--a general explanation. The explanation is not reassuring; it is not proven, but it is accepted by many, and has, for me, a very reasonable probability. Let us at least not recoil from its consideration.” Under the encouragement of this exhortation, the audience seemed to slide forward in their seats a few inches, with the impetus of a renewed hope.