WE have received from Dr. George Sheppard, State geologist in the Republic of Ecuador, a brief account of the severe earthquake that occurred at 10.31 a.m. on October 2 in the Santa Elena peninsula, Ecuador. Off Salinas, the cable that runs southward was broken at a distance of 14 miles from land. At La Libertad, the sea receded immediately after the earthquake, rose to high-tide level at 11.30 a.m. (low tide having been at about 10 a.m.), fell to low water at noon, and rose again to the former mark at 2 p.m. At Ancon, the ground was seen by Dr. Sheppard to be slowly undulating, and the water in a large tank flowed over the north-east side, from which it is inferred that the origin lay towards the west and beneath the Pacific. Among the after-shocks was one at 5.36 a.m. on October 3, of only slightly less intensity than the principal earthquake. It would seem, from the above account, that the epicentre was not far from that of the Colombian earthquake of January 31, 1906, the first of the three great earthquakes of that year that occurred along the Pacific coast of America.