And yet, says Major Dutton, this description suggests but a single instance, or a few instances, of what earthquakes are like. In some the full vigour of the shock comes with explosive suddenness. People find themselves suddenly thrown to the earth, the ground swept from under their feet. Sometimes the rolling waves of earth are absent, and the movement is a rude quiver, rapidly vibrating in every direction--twisting, contorting, wrenching the ground as if in a determined effort to shake it into dust. Sometimes the most pronounced motion is up and down, as if the earth beneath were being hammered with giant strokes. Sometimes the growth, the climax, the dying out of the earthquake movement are repeated before the first shocks have ceased, or a few minutes afterwards, or even with an interval of several hours. The last-named case is, however, uncommon, though after the first shocks of a great earthquake there are minor shocks and tremblings for days, weeks, or months afterwards. Some of these are of considerable force, though they do not inflict the devastation of the principal earthquake. The greatest earthquakes are not always those which wreak the largest amount of destruction. Evidently an earthquake, the centre of which is situated near a great city, is more appalling in its effects than one which takes place in some desert place like the steppes of Siberia. Recent earthquakes in Italy and near San Francisco were regarded as great earthquakes because they took place in thickly populated neighbourhoods. In cities, writes Professor W. H. Hobbs, to the rumbling of the earthquake is quickly added the crash of falling masonry, and to this succeeds an uncanny grey darkness as the air becomes filled with the dust from broken bricks, mortar, and plaster.... In places the ground opens and swallows the objects which lie upon it. Ponds are sucked down and disappear, and great fountains of water gush out and flood the country. During the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 water was shot upwards in vertical sheets and carried to the tops of the highest trees. Near Lake Baikal, during the earthquake on January 26th, 1862, the surface of the steppe, over two hundred square miles, was suddenly dropped; fountains opened at many parts within the sunken area, and water shot up to heights of twenty feet. The water gushed also in great volume from the open wells, and where these were tightly covered by wooden caps, their lids were shot up into the air like corks from champagne bottles. On the night of September 5th, 1896, during heavy earthquake shocks in Iceland, a new warm spring suddenly opened to the accompaniment of loud roaring and whistling, and threw water, steam, and fragments of rock to a height estimated at six hundred feet. The force of the new geyser was, however, soon spent, and ten days later it ceased to flow. Nearly all the Icelandic geysers suffered changes during this earthquake, and the