"SHIVERING" MOUNTAIN

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 120, 25 May 1925, Page 15

"SHIVERING" MOUNTAIN

CAUSES OF TWO KINDS OF LAND-

SLIDES.

Many troublesome landslides have occurred already this year in England owing to the wet weather. The causes are simple enough, declares William Platt in the "Daily Chronicle." Whenever the geological formation is that of alternate hard and soft rocks, and when this occurs in any sufficiently steep bank, hill, or mountain, there will always be the risk of a landslide, especially after heavy rains, which soak into the softer layers and make them loose and slippery. Landslides may be divided into two classes—natural and artificial. The former occur in the wear and tear of Nature. That picturesque mountain in the Derbyshire Pennines called Al>un Tor is so liable to landslides that it has been nicknamed locally "The Shivering Mountain."% Another celebrated instance is the landslide near Shanklin, Isle of Wight. • ■ ■

At Morok, in Norway (Norangsdal), a huge landslide dammed up a river valley, causing the water to pile up and form a. lake. _ Tbo people who lived in the village in the valley managed to escape, but their red-roofed cottages can be seen to-day under the clear waters of the huge tarn thus formed.

But although satural landslides are l>y no means rare, artificial ones are probably still commoner. Nature has h.-ict plenty of time in which to settle down, and weak slopes .have fallen till they have found something like a balance; but the moment man begins to interfere, this balance is disturbed, and t-voublo is apt to begin again. .Observe in railway cuttings the lines of buttressing stones, built in to give an added strength, A railway engineer lias to bn soiu»slii|ji~ aC n pvacUmri ueoiogSfll. if lie J* U, U^' jUis pork su.£ccss!ulJj\