VOLCANIC PHENOMENA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 11 October 1924, Page 14

VOLCANIC PHENOMENA.

AMERICAN PROFESSOR’S SUGGESTIONS. At a recent meeting of the Board of Science and Art, the chairman (Hon. G. M. Thomson, M.L.C.) read a letter he had received from Dr. T. A. dagger, volcanologist at the Hawaii Volcanic Observatory, urging the establishment of. a geophysical. observatory in New Zealand to link up the study of the Pacific. Dr. Jagger said he would like to see a strong geophysical observatory or central laboratory for geophysics in New Zealand, as part of • a consistent Anglo-Saxon chain of such ■stations from San Francisco to Dunedin.

Xew Zealand, Hawaii and California, said Dr. dagger, were all volcanic and highly seismic. They constituted a belt dividing the- Pacific:, into sections over a distance of 8000 miles, all three equipped with English-speaking universities and Government surveys under first-class Powers, with big naval equipment, and both Britain and America were using their navies for science. New Zealand could put a new eurth-and-star laboratory on the map, just as Dr. Hale had done at the Mount- Wilson Observatory in Pasadena. A centre station at'Dunedin, specialising, sav, on the moon and the southern heavens, could well he the headquarters for all 'phenomena concerning the character, causes and development of New Zealand earth movements, underground temperatures and subterranean sounds. A central geophysical station, Dr. Jagge-i* suggests, would require two or three subordinate stations in the volcanic and seismic districts. There was already a station at Samoa, and an expert should be stationed at xonga. Subordinate university stations could he developed as required.