First [- Fourth] Report on the Facts of Earthquake Phenomena. [In] Report of the Twentieth [- Twenty-Eighth] Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science … 1850 [- 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, & 1858].

MALLET, Robert.

Published by London: John Murray, 1851-59

About this Item

First editions, journal issues, of these foundation works of seismology, "the first really scientific investigation" on the topic (Davison, p. 81); an association set, from the library of William Cole, 3rd Earl of Enniskillen, an Irish palaeontologist who worked closely with Mallet. Also present are the first appearances of significant papers by Robert Angus Smith, announcing the discovery of acid rain, and Hugh Cleghorn, reporting on the dangers of tropical deforestation and its affect on climate. The Irish civil engineer and scientist Robert Mallet (1810-1881) is often referred to as the father of seismology, not least for having coined the word, alongside other key terminology like epicentre, seismic focus, angle of emergence, isoseismal line, and meizoseismal area. At the beginning of his earthquake studies "[Mallet] produced an experimental seismograph in 1846. Important elements of his model, which was never actually used, were incorporated in the seismograph that Luigi Palmieri made in 1855. Between 1850 and 1861 Mallet set off explosions in different locations to determine the rate of travel of seismic waves in sand (825 feet per second), solid granite (1,665 feet per second) and quartzite (1,162 feet per second). Mallet presented his most important seismic results in four Report[s] to the British Association (1850, 1851, 1852-54, 1858)", the organisation which funded the majority of his research (DSB). In 1857 Mallet was supported by Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin in his bid for financial assistance from the Royal Society to record first-hand the devastation of the Great Neapolitan Earthquake. In the First and Second Reports Mallet examines the historical narratives of earthquakes - with reference to Aristotle's theory of winds and Humboldt's view of nature - and explains his own experiments conducted on the coast of Ireland to determine the speed of transit of earthquakes. The Third and Fourth Reports comprise Mallet's monumental catalogue, compiled with the assistance of his eldest son John William Mallet, which records approximately 6,831 earthquakes from every known part of the world between 1606 BCE and 1858. Made with reference to earlier, incomplete catalogues, travel books, British, French, and German newspapers and scientific journals, the catalogue lists time of occurrence; area chiefly affected; direction, duration and number of shocks; accompanying sea-waves; meteorological and secondary phenomena; and the authorities for the records. The final two reports are accompanied by Mallet's "Seismographic Map of the World" (1857), which "remained for nearly half a century our best representation of the distribution of earthquakes over the globe" (Davison, p. 74). An early indicator of their importance, the Third and Fourth Reports were also issued separately under the title The Earthquake Catalogue of the British Association (1858). At the forefront of the development of scientific literature, the British Association for the Advancement of Science held its first meeting in York on 26 September 1831. The proceedings from each annual meeting were published in bound volumes, dated the year succeeding, and contained transcripts of each paper given and reports from various committees. In the present volumes Mallet's Reports are joined by first printings of significant papers on acid rain ("On the Air and Water of Towns" by Robert Angus Smith; vol. 2, pp. 66-77) and tropical deforestation ("Report. to consider the probable Effects in an Oeconomical and Physical Point of View of the Destruction of Tropical Forests" by Hugh Cleghorn; vol. 2, pp. 78-102). Mallet was a life member of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland and acted as its president from 1846-8, during which time William Cole, 3rd Earl of Enniskillen (1807-1886) served as vice-president. A wealthy collector and amateur geologist, Cole was renowned for his fine collection of fossil fishes at Florence Court, which eventually numbered nearly 10,000 individu.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: First [- Fourth] Report on the Facts of Earthquake Phenomena. [In] Report of the Twentieth [- Twenty-Eighth] Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science … 1850 [- 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, & 1858].
• Publisher: London: John Murray, 1851-59
• Edition: 1st Edition