THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1907. NATURAL DISTURBANCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13389, 18 January 1907, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1907. NATURAL DISTURBANCES.

We cannot dismiss as merely coin eidental the cluster of natural tlis tiirbanctts which have forced themselves upon public notice during the past two or three days. The unprecedented floods in New Zealand, the extraordinary snowfall in Rout hern France, the earthquake in Jamaica, ami the typhoon in the Philippines, have certainly some relationship with one another if our scientists could only discover it. We may an further than litis and take it for granted that the incidents in (pies tion are but a part of a very much greater and very widely spread series of disturbances. For though our civilisation is more extensive than any previous civilisation has been it by no means covers the greater partof the world. A country docs not become civilised merely because the British or the German or any other flag is hoisted over it : and in Africa, in Asia, and in South and Central America are vast areas where almost anything may still happen without the news being immediately flashed throughout the whole of the civilised world. The

lift ins? of the Waikato ten feet above its normal level is of more importance to what, we term civilisation than the lifting of the Amaw.i or the Zambesi many feci above all previous records. The destruction of many thousands of Chinese by flood hardly interests us, and an i earthquake might shatter halt the j towns and villages of Bolivia with out causing any particular remark. The nervous system of civilisation is composed of telegraph and cable, and there are still very many millions of square miles, within the habitable zones, which are far rej moved from the hum of the wires. I By far the majority of the world's I inhabitants have never seen a | steamer, a train, or a telegraph post. Most of them do not know that the world is round and have no interest whatever in the things which happen a mile or two beyond their own locality. We sometimes complain of the parochialism of the civilised man and even fee! aggrieved that the Englishman does not greatly concern himself with the affairs of the colonics. But no parochialism is so complete and absorbing as that of the barbarian, ! to whom the [Englishman is a type i*Of indescribable restlessness and in- ; satiable curiosity. This must be j realised to understand thai our | knowledge of what is happening in j the world is still exceedingly limited, | and that any three or four noticeable natural disturbances brought together into our ken are presumably representative of many others, equally violent, of which we do not hear. We may reasonably assume, therefore, that the Earth is passing through another of the great storms which have of late years been brought within the scope of the human imaginings, and that it has been buffeted throughout its whole substance by those supernal influences which we cannot discern excepting by their effects upon the world on which wo live. From this point of view the weather experienced in Auckland Province was not a local disturbance of unusual violence, but one of the manifold results of some external influence which has affected the whole globe. So far from there being anything alarming in this idea of world-wide disturbance it is only when civilised men grasp the idea in all its bearings that they can perceive the folly of alarm or panic. The development of the nervous system of modern civilisation, the spreading out over the lands and seas occupied and traversed by civilised men of the telegraph and cable lines which ! now knit together those who are j within the pale, has created, within an exceedingly short time, a sensitiveness to these external influences which before did not exist. The Earth was always affected by them. j just as it is now. but Man did not I know it. Volcanoes flung their fiery : dust to the clouds and poured their j molten rock over moor and forest. j Storms swept over islands and con- | tinents and laid low the trees of | the forest and the houses of gather-

ing towns. Torrential rains flooded rivers and submerged valleys and lowlands. Earthquakes shook the seemingly solid earth ami great qjtthquake waves lifted themselves against populous coasts. All this has gone on ever since man appeared on the earth, and longer, as we know from the indisputable testimony of the rocks, from the records written on the earth itself. But in I the far past, men knew nothing beyond what happened to themselves or to their immediate neighbours and latterly only learned of distant storm and tempest, earthquake and tidal wave, by slow and uncertain I communication. With the facilities of a hundred years ago. it would j have taken months for England to learn that. Kingston had been overthrown ; hardly yet could Washington have been informed that San Francisco had been destroyed ; men would never hear of the typhoon in the Philippines excepting as a sailor's yarn ; ami only as a traveller's tale would the world hear of the wintry weather in the Cevennes. To-day. when anything worthy of notice happens within the ken of civilisation, it is flashed to and fro along the wires, published in the daily press, read while the news is warm by the millions of civilised j men and women. So that we have | begun to realise that the Earth is periodically shaken by influences 100 j stupendous for conception and can : find comfort in the sure and certain j knowledge that as it- is now so it | has always been. The Waikato and the Thames may rise in flood ; Jamaica may shake and Kingston fall in ruins ; California may quiver ; a tidal wave may sweep along the Japanese coast the South of France may freeze and the continent of Australia scorch ; but the Earth swings along without any apparent difficulty. And civilisation man- hope, sooner or later, by eon stanfc tabulation and incessant observation, to probe to the bottom of those great- natural disturbances. As the scientist can to-day foretell eclipse and conjunction, the scientist of to-morrow may be able to foretell earthquake and volcanic I eruption, typhoon, frost, and flood. so that none need suffer by Iweitm | caught, unprepared. For if there is i i • ' ' • • ii one thing certain of natural phono--lii i • t ; menn it is that they result from Law ! and that there is no such tiling in J i lie universe as ''accident" or I •• chance."