CRICKET.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XX, Issue 2323, 11 January 1893, Page 2

CRICKET.

N.S.W. v. SOUTH AUSTBALIA. .

(PER PRESS ASSOCIATION.)

SYDNEY, January 11. The first inninßS of Sooth Australian team closed for 188. They followed on,^ and in the seoond essay only made 92. This was chiefly doe to the excellent bowling of Turner. A. Jarvis was the highest Bcorer with %% New South' Wales won by an innings and 60 runs.

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An Explanation of Earthquakes, ' * * — #*

Sir Robert Ball cdntributes to the King's Own an account of the great earthquake which "occurred in Japan on October 28, 1891, in which he gives an explanation of earthquakes. The great disturbance, he says, took place at the centre of Japan, in the prefectures of Aichi and G-ifu. Over a region of about 4,200 square milea the destruction of buildings and engineering works waß tremendous. But the influence of the earthquake had a much wider range. Brick buildings were affected over an area six times a3 groat as that we have named, and the shocks were experienced with greater or less intensity throughout a district far greater still. Japan is a country in which earthquakes are of great frequency, and many disturbances have been recorded in the district now under consideration in previous years. For example, in 1888, about nineteen shocks were experienced near the centre of the region which suffered most severely in October, 1891 It has also been recorded that violent earthquakes have happened in the northern part of Q-if v in the earlier portion of the present century. On three occasions, buildings were wrecked, lives .have been sacrificed, and great floods have caused widespread destruction. It was in a mountain range' that the disturbance seems to have originated. Deep down in the eaith some great convulsion occurred. As to the precise nature of the convulsion we are informed, but it is nevertheless possible to give a general notion of the cause from which such phenomena take their origin. The entire interior of our globe is composed of matter heated to such an extent that its behaviour must be quite different from? that of the solid rocks that we know on its surface. Erom these considerations it will not' be difficult to show that earthquakes must occasionally happen. If the earth is the great heated globe that we know it is, then, according to the laws of heat, it must be continually cooling. It is true that the process of cooling is so extremely slow that in centuries, or even thousands of years, there is no change in the thermal condition of the globe which | is appreciable to our observation, bat still the cooling goes on from age to age. Another law of heat assures us that, in general, a body that is cooling must be contracting—a red-hot poker becomes somewhat shorter as it parts with its heat and growf cold. An iron ball which when cold will just pass through a ring, will be too large to pass through the ring when the ball is glowing with red heat. The earth cannot form an exception to this general law. It is cooling, and therefore it must be contracting. It is true that the change is a very slow one. It would be impossible by any measurement to show that the earth is any smaller now than it was last year, or than it was a hundred years ago, but nevertheless, the .shrinking, still goes ,on. And now we are getting very near to the true explanation of earthquakes. The exterior of the earth is not only cold, but it has become hard and solid. It is a crust or shell which encloses the interior, which has not yet lost its heat, and which is still very far from hard. As this inner part loses heat it tends to get smaller than the outer crust. It' is, however, impossible for a void to be created. The crust must, therefore, perforce accommodate itself to the shrinking interior. This may, perhaps, take place in some degree gradually, but it is easy to see that the, process must not unfrequently be be ' accompanied by violence. A sudden settlement will occur at some spot which at the moment is least able to resist, a disturbance of the solid crust is the necessary consequence, and that is what we call an earthquake.