Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/23

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
PREFACE.
xi

tation having been due to cost of production. The whole, however, are referred to by number in the text, those omitted with the addition (Coll. Roy. Soc.); and the originals may be consulted by Seismologists in the Library of the Royal Society, where the entire collection made, is now preserved along with the original sketches, maps, and manuscript.

Within a week of the Author's return to England in April, 1858, he addressed a preliminary Report to the President and Council of the Royal Society, the nature of which may be seen by the following extract from its introductory sentences:—

"On my return from the expedition of observation in the earthquake-shaken provinces of Naples, entrusted to me by the Royal Society, it becomes my duty to report briefly to your Lordship as President, and to the Council, where I have been, what I have done, and what of value to science, I may conceive myself to have accomplished; reserving scientific details and deductions to a separate and more systematic communication, which I hope ere long to have the honour of laying before the Royal Society, and which will embrace the results of my inquiries."

Two years nearly elapsed before the Author, interrupted frequently through necessity of professional avocation, and by other events, was enabled to complete the laborious work of reducing his observations, involving much tedious calculation, expanding and writing out his field notes, colligating his results, and finally bringing