EARTHQUAKES PREDICTED.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8795, 24 April 1907, Page 3

EARTHQUAKES PREDICTED.

Current Literature points out that the Jamaica earthquake came with timely reference to prpphecy. Long before Kingston was transformed from the gayest cf tropical cities into a funeral pyre bright with the flames that cost nine hundred lives, the earthquake had been predicted with considerable accuracy by two seismologists of note. Dr. Joseph F. Nowack, after twenty years' study of "the laws governing " critical'' natural phenomena, predicted last year, beforo the assembled Academy of Sciences at Havana, just what has happened at Kington. The time limit fixed by Dr Nowack, whose seismological reseaiches have been encouraged; by the Austrian fcJovernment, proved, correct.

Not less impressive was [the forecast of that well-known student of terrestrial phenomena, Mr Hugh Clements, an Englishman. His prophecy of a seismological upheaval in the West Indies specified the day of the event and was published in the London Standard some little time before its fulfilment. The Clements theory is that the joint attraction of the sun and the moon upon the earth from a common centre produce 3 oceanic tides. These tides cause the waves of quakes to which seismologists refer as tremors of the terrestrial crust.

Tb.B Nowack theory has to do with the growth of the abrus plant, found in Cuba and Mexico. There is a direct relation, according to Newack, between the rate of growth and the state of dryness cf the abrus p.'ant in any given season and the atmospheric conditions that precede an earthquake. Two Austrian, noblemen have become 5.; hapvetsed with tho Mowack theory that they have defrayed tbe cost of its further development. Havana, according to Dr Ncwaqk, will be the next conspicugus sufferer from the series of disturbances for which the shrinkage of our cooling j globe is responsible, The Cuban I capita!, it is averred, is built upon a submerged volcanic crater. It is the ! intersecting point of the two lines along which the island will bo split I by an earthquake that cannot be long delayed.