Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/641

Rh out of a population of about three hundred people, twenty-three were killed and sixty injured. Goodyear has described in detail the effect of this earthquake. After the event an examination showed numerous fault lines, extending as a general thing parallel to the base of the Sierras. Local areas sank, and in addition to the vertical movement there was a horizontal one amounting in some instances to from twelve to eighteen feet. Owing to the slight rainfall, the fault scarps left by this earthquake may still be seen. They indicate either a depression of the valley or an elevation of the Sierras to the extent of several feet. Russell mentions a fault cliff near Mono Lake of fifty feet which he thinks may date from this disturbance. It is clear that an equilibrium has not yet been reached, and there is no telling when the shocks may be repeated. These things forcibly remind us that geological processes are going on to-day as in the past. The common phenomena around us teach the same thing, but we become so used to them that they are not noticed, and it is only when our attention is called to some great example, something out of the ordinary, that we realize the transitoriness of even the great mountains.

I have thus tried to trace in a general way the history of the fault fissures and the great mountains and deep valleys produced by them along eastern California from their inception in the Cretaceous down to the present. Many of the geological phenomena connected with this subject are without doubt displayed on a grander and more imposing scale in this region than anywhere else in the United States.

is related in William Vogt's Vie d'un Homme (Carl Vogt) that one evening Vogt, Helmholtz, and Kopp were talking about fish culture with the proprietor of an inn near Heidelberg. The innkeeper, who practiced in the art, expressed his contempt of all the books that pretended to treat of it—saying that the whole lot was not worth a mug of stale beer. Some were obscure, others wrong, and others incomplete; and one could see in an instant that they were all written by closet naturalists who had never one of them caught a gudgeon. Helmholtz and Kopp enjoyed his remarks greatly as a joke at the expense of Vogt, who had written a book on the subject, and laughed at their comrade. The innkeeper was gratified at the signs of approval of what he had said, and continued: "Now I think of it, gentlemen, I must make one exception. I have a book published by Brockhaus at Leipsic, with pictures in the text, that is worth more than all the rest together. It is written by a man who knows all about the subject, who we perceive at once has seen with his own eyes and tried his methods himself. I will show it to you." 1 The man withdrew and returned with the volume. "Here it is! it has just been published. It is called Die künstliche Fischzucht" (Artificial Fish Culture), "by Prof. Carl Vogt, professor in Geneva!" It was Vogt's turn to laugh.