EARTHQUAKE IN TASMANIA,

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12000, 24 June 1902, Page 5

EARTHQUAKE IN TASMANIA,

By Telegraph.— Association.—Copyright.

Launceston, June 23. A severe earth tremor was felt here on Saturday morning. It lasted half a minute. Windows and pottery rattled, but no damage was done.

In a recent article in the Melbourne Argue, Professor J. W. Gregory, under the iieauing " Australia— Crust we Live On," writer as follows:—The sudden eruption at Martinique of a volcano thought to be safely extinct suggests the possibility of renewed outbreaks from the old Victorian volcanoes. For'our .State shows the working of volcanic activity on a truly colossal scale. The great plains of Western Victoria, from Macadon ic Geelong, from Melbourne to Hamilton, &*u one vast sheet of basaltic lava; Macedon aikd Dandenong are the stumps of old volcanoes; Warrenheip is a crater snowing less signs of age than craters which have renewed tiHir activity after a long stage of repose; the Dargo Plains and the Kangaroo Grounds 3 re lava-capped plateaux; the chocolate soil which is so prominent in land auctioneers' catalogues is generally formed from oec'm;posed volcanic rocks. We find truss <-•? volcanic rocks from the basalt dyke at Gabo Island on the east to the basalt plains on the western frontier, from the alps of Benambra on the north to the old volcanic plug on the foreshore at Cape Patterson. The vast extent of our volcanic rocks implies subsidences of great magnitude. Before the outbreak of the basaltic lavas of Victoria land extended far south of the present coastline. The granite islands of Bass' Straits are the nuclei of its mountain masses, and the carbonaceous rocks of the Gippsland and Otway Ranges were formed in the. swamps on its northern slopes. This great land was destroyed b> the foundering of the belt of the earth's crust south of the Victorian coast. Great fractures parallel to the sunken belt cut through the Victorian rocks, and through points along these fractures occurred the great basaltic eruptions. They must* have continued for a long period, and lasted till the arrival of the aborigines, as some of their legends refer to smoking mountains. Some of these craters are in such excellent preservation, and show less signs of age than volcanoes which have been elsewhere found to be dormant and not extinct. But there are no signs that suggest a probable revival of their activity Earthquake shocks occasionally shake Victoria, but they are only slight. Wo have a most reassuring absence of steam vents and sulphur springs; in fact, the earth's crust in Victoria seems to have reached a satisfactory state of equilibrium after the wild disturbances of the basaltic period.