BRITAIN IS ON THE MOVE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 48, 24 August 1935, Page 25

BRITAIN IS ON THE MOVE

According to a statement .in the House of Commons Select Committee considering the Ouse Draining Bill, England is "tilting a bit." It is also on the move, writes W. Shepherd in the "Daily Mail." '■ There.is abundant' evidence that Great Britain is—geologically speaking —very touch alive. .The earthquake near Abertillery, which cracked a mountain and shot a man out of bed,' was very nearly the two-thousandth jolt which Britannia has given to.the children in her lap. Her pulse has been recorded for nearly aHhousand years, and has given an average of two beats annually since. A.D. 974, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle noted our earliest shock. A series of palpitations in 1750, centred in London, destroyed the new spire of Westminster Abbey, and was noted by John Wesley in his diary, while only fifty years ago she fell into convulsionsiwhich damaged 1212 buildings in a few seconds. Though centred at Colchester, this earthquake was felt over an area of 100,000 square miles, for a movement of the ground of only a sixteen-hun-dredth of an inch is perceptible without instruments! Forty-two shocks of more than half this intensity have done many thou- ■ sands of pounds' worth of .damage, during ..the present century. But why should Britain tremble so? —;she covers no subterranean fires, like

Italy and Japan. Bather is she^suffering from shivering-fits, due to local inflammation and broken bones, and all her important fractures—or "faults" —have now been located. Her troubles have nothing to do with the heat which I warms the spring-water at Bath, but are caused by minute land-slips, sometimes involving a whole* county. The huge faults of the Scottish Highlands (where the ground sometimes gapes with boredom during a mere earthquake) hold the record in point of numbers, and they. also claim the weight-putting championship. At Inverness (which was violently shaken by a loud shock last autumn) some 601b coping stones were once thrown 20 yards! During the same earthquake, the octagonal tower of the county gaol achieved an astonishing rotation, which brought its angles over the flat sides of the base. The amazingly sensitive seismographs at Kew are constantly recording small earth tremors, including those caused by heavy seas in \ the Thames estuary, and recent earthquakes have been detected at Hereford, the Channel Isles, and in the North Sea, off Cromer. But in spite of the fact that Britain is increasingly "on the move," it is still j one of the safest.countries in the world ; to live in, and even if we read Cbw-per's-lines in a geological sense: "England, with all thy faults I love thee still," the sentiment will yet be justified.