Rainfall and Earthquake Periods

Abstract

WITH reference to the remarkable letter of “A. B. M.,” which appeared in your number of this week (May 19), p. 31, as to the recurrence of cold and wet periods at about thirty-five years' interval (measuring from the centre of one such period to that of the next), I beg leave to call attention to the fact that thirty-five years represents a marked period of recurrence of maximum frequency of earthquakes, as I showed in a paper which was submitted to the Royal Irish Academy in 1887, but not published. That a relation should exist between earthquakes, volcanic disturbances, and the atmospheric conditions which determine wet and dry periods, seems to me more reasonable to accept à priori, than to assume that these phenomena are quite independent of each other.