neighbourhood was greatly disturbed; and soon after the fall of the cliffs of Scylla the sea rose to a height of twenty feet, and the wave rolling over the coast-line drowned 1500 people. Japan is perhaps as unstable an area as anywhere exists on the earth, and the records of its earthquakes are more complete than in any other country. The number of destructive earthquakes recorded there in the last fifteen hundred years is 223. Since the beginning of the seventeenth century the records are fairly perfect, and it is found that since then a destructive earthquake has occurred somewhere in the Japanese islands nearly every two and a half years. For the lighter shocks systematic observation has become necessary, and the Japanese, with that development of the scientific spirit which is so remarkable an accompaniment of their progress during the last generation, have organised an Earthquake Recording Service--a Seismological Bureau--at which such conspicuous meteorologists as Mr. John Milne and Dr. Knott have worked, and which has produced great seismologists among the Japanese themselves. As many of our readers are aware, the earth is hardly ever still; it trembles continually like a boiling kettle, though not for the same reasons; and the delicate instruments for measuring earthquakes, which are called seismometers, show continual earth tremors or earth shivers. Since 1888 the earthquakes of all intensities recorded in Japan give a yearly average of 1447 shocks, or a daily average of four. Until the great earthquake of 1891, the greatest shocks within the memory of living men were those of 1854-5. The earthquake of October 28th, 1891, shook an area of 243,000 square miles, or more than three-fifths of the entire area of Japan, though the greatest damage was done on the Mino-Owari Plain, a broad expanse of country occupied by rice fields and surrounded by mountains. Without the least warning the blow came, and in the first shock 20,000 buildings fell, 7000 people were killed and 17,000 were injured. Innumerable fissures great and small appeared all over the plain, and the houses in the thickly packed villages fell like packs of cards. The plain is one of Japan's great gardens, and supported almost 1000 people to the square mile. Villages were thereabout continuous, and a narrow lane of unusual destruction could be traced through them for twenty miles. After the first shock there were numerous smaller ones, and during the next five months no fewer than 256 shocks were recorded in all. Among the more remarkable effects of the earthquake was the actual shifting of the country. Along a crack many miles in length the plain after the earthquake was some feet lower on one side than on the other. Reservoirs and swamps were formed, as well as sand pits and mud craters. The most conspicuous effect, however, from a geological standpoint was the shifting and distortion of the strata. [Illustration: _Photo, G. C. Niven_