EARTHQUAKES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1520, 19 February 1886, Page 3

EARTHQUAKES.

The increasing frequency and proximity of earthquake shocks is becoming alarming. It seems as if we hare entered upon a period of seismic activity, and that, the centre of disturbance is gradually drawing nearer and nearer to Europe. The circumstance is ominous, for a Frenchman who successfully predicted three years previously the threat Ischian earthquake and unparalleled volcanic outburst in Java in 1883, has said that we may expect the critical epoch, when the subterranean agitation will reach a climax and burst into "a seismic tempest'' of tremendous energy, about April, 1886. The fulfilment of the prophet's prediction in 1883 was certainly remarkable, but fortunately for our mind, there is every reason to suppose that it was accidental—the result of a coincidence; for the prophet has been foolish enough to disclose the source of his inspiration—a thing a wise prophet should never do, and science has stepped in and extinguished it. It seems that by tabulating the dates of the recorded dates of history, he was led to the discovery of a period in their recurrence, and that in the c >urse of his search for some efficient cause of §uch periodicity he hit upon the Jupiter and Saturn, and certain meteor swarms. Those celestial bodies, he calculated, would exercise a periodic influence on our earth coincident with the periodic recurrence of great earthquakes Cause and effect—what more obvious ? But, unluckily for the ingen-{-us Frenchman, he did not succeed in demonstrating the connection he thus sought to establish, and phygica 1 science tells us that such an influence as he assumed to exist is impossible. Of course, physical science might be wrong, but it i* not at all likely that we are going to throw over our laboriously acquired stock of knowledge for the sake of a wild theory ; so we may await the triumph of science and tbe confusion ot the prophet in con-fort and confidence.