known, has not been barren in results absolutely practical
and utilitarian. The minute investigation of the destruction of
buildings, etc., and the deductions that have been made as to the
relations between the form, height, materials, methods of building,
combination of timber and of masonry, and many other architectural or
constructive conditions, have made it certain now that earthquake-proof
houses and other edifices can be constructed with facility, and at no
great increase, if any at all, of cost. I can affirm that there is no
physical necessity why in frequently and violently shaken countries,
such as Southern Italy or the Oriental end generally of the
Mediterranean, victims should hereafter continue by thousands to be
sacrificed by the fall of their ill-designed and badly built houses.

Were a "Building Act" properly framed, put in force by the Italian
Government in the Basilicatas and Capitanata, etc., so that new houses
or existing ones, when rebuilt, should be so in accordance with certain
simple rules, a not very distant time can be foreseen when Earthquakes,
passing through these rich and fertile but now frequently sorely
afflicted regions, should come and go, having left but little trace of
ruin or death behind. Some disasters there must always be, for we
cannot make the flanks of mountains, nor the beds of torrents, etc.,
always secure; but the main mortality of all Earthquakes is in the
houses or other inhabited buildings. Make these proof, and the wholesale
slaughter is at an end.

The principles we have established have been thus practically applied in
another direction. The Japanese Government, with the keen and rapid
perception of the powers inherent in European science which
characterises now that wonderful people, has commenced to illuminate its
coasts by lighthouses constructed after the best European models. But
Japan is greatly convulsed by earthquakes, and lighthouses, as being
lofty buildings, are peculiarly liable to be destroyed by them.

The engineer of the Japanese Government for these lights, Mr. Thomas
Stevenson, C.E. (one of the engineers to the Commissioners of Northern
Lights), was instructed to have regard, in the design of those
lighthouses, to their exposure to shock. I was consulted by Mr.
Stevenson as to the general principles to be observed; and those
edifices have been constructed so that they are presumedly proof against
the most violent shocks likely to visit Japan; not, p