The city is so situated as to be affected by shocks from all the various seismological centres of Luzon, especially those from the active volcano Taal, 35 m.
This is adorned with statues and frescoes by modern German artists, and has near it the chemical, physical, botanical, geological, seismological and zoological institutes, also the observatory, all designed by Eggert and built between 1877 and 1888.
The Philippine government also maintains here a bureau of science which publishes the monthly Philippine Journal of Science, and co-operates with the Jesuits in maintaining, in Ermita, the Manila observatory (meteorological, seismological and astronomical), which is one of the best equipped institutions of the kind in the East.