Descriptive Catalogues of Historical Earthquakes in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East; Revisited - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 26

of which are useful for investigating the seismicity of the Americas and the Far
East (Mallet 1850-58).
Perrey 's annual lists of earthquakes for the 28 years 1844-71 are invaluable.
They occupy 28 papers and the total number of pages in these Memoires is just
over 2,500. Perrey collected much of the material by correspondence and also
from the international press. His annual lists are a vast storehouse of facts; for
the most part he was content to leave discussion of the results to others. There is
seldom any attempt to determine the position of the epicentre, none to discover
the relation between main shock and aftershocks or the relation between shocks
felt at the same time at different places (Perrey 1844-1873).
Schmidt 's catalogues for the Southern Balkans and Asia Minor is one of the
most important sets of data for the region. It depends very little on previous lists
or catalogues and from about 1800 onwards, is the result of his own labours.
From after about 1858 to the end of 1878, his catalogue contains just under
4,000 entries, derived chiefly from correspondence with observers, travellers and
consuls throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and from the Press in Athens,
Istanbul, Izmir and other places in the area (Schmidt 1867, 1879).
A long memoir containing lists of earthquakes for the twenty years, 1865-84,
was published by Fuchs . These lists include nearly 10,000 entries altogether,
containing a substantial amount of information for earthquakes worldwide. In
common with some other catalogues, this work must be used with caution, for
nowhere does Fuchs cite his sources, and it is accordingly difficult now to appre-
ciate the value of the information which he retrieved (Fuchs 1886).
Mushketov and Orlov 's earthquake catalogue for the Russian empire ends in
1888. It is based on previous catalogues but also on contemporary national and
local Russian press reports and to a lesser extent on unpublished documents.
Events are fully annotated and sources are given in full. This is a very useful
source of information (Mushketov and Orlov 1893).
Milne 's world catalogue of destructive earthquakes up to 1899 is based entirely
on previous lists. It is devoid of information from original sources, except for
the last decades of the period for which information comes from unpublished
documents (Milne 1911).
Montessus de Ballore 's world catalogue consists of 171,434 entries which cover
the period up to 1906. Only a small fraction of this enormous volume of informa-
tion, which covers mainly the second half of the last century, has been published,
and it remains little known. However, the published information is not of very
great value; the unpublished files, kept in the Departement des Cartes et Plans,
Depot de la Societ´edeGeographie of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, where
they occupy 30 metres of bookshelf, did not prove, on examination, to be as use-
ful as had been anticipated. Much of the information in these files was extracted
from previous catalogues and press reports, with little original material derived
from correspondence with observers (Montessus De Ballore 1906, 1924).
Sieberg 's annotated world catalogue of earthquakes contains a considerable
amount of information, including isoseismal maps for the larger historical earth-
quakes worldwide up to 1930. His work, he admits, is subjective, influenced by