Seismology in Italy

Abstract

I HAVE only lately seen Dr. Johnston-Lavis's article in NATURE (vol. xxxix. p. 329), on the present state of seismology in Italy. I have read it with much interest, and with the greatest satisfaction, because it deals with the most recent works due to the new and serious impulse given to the study by the Government during the last five years. I thank the author for having noticed ore of my writings, “Sulla sistemazione delle osservazioni geodinamiche regolari.” There is little—hardly anything—absolutely new in this work, because in writing it I desired only to sum up the deliberations of the Royal Geodynamical Commission, to which I had the honour to belong. I also brought together in it all that was really serious and positive in other works, with the intention of dispelling the confusion which unhappily prevailed when this scientific branch was in the power of dilettantism, which had the prerogative of the long-winded style, the charlatanism, and the seismic magic, of which the author of the article justly complains. In a word, I wished to set forth a proper programme, with the ideas which the Commission conceived, and which continue to form the principle of the deliberations of the directing Council for Meteorology and Geodynamics, in which the Commission has been merged. On this serious and well-determined principle the service is continued in the island of Ischia as elsewhere.