Reply by the author to C. Lomnitz and J. Adauto de Souza

I am pleased to see my work used to confirm the thoughts and observations of another. Lomnitz and Adauto de Souza use my paper to confirm the existence of body waves with velocities less than the velocity of sound in air. Contrary to one of their statements, I consider this to be the normal case rather than the exception. Shallow reflection seismology is perpetually faced with field records that show a direct body‐wave arrival following the arrival of the air‐coupled wave. A particular example is shown by Birkelo et al. (1987), who even applied a stacking velocity less than the velocity of sound in air to process a very shallow reflector. I have measured the time shift from reflectors recorded by vertically separated geophones in soils and determined direct propagation velocities as low as 100 m/s.