NEW THEORY OF EARTHQUAKES.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1162, 22 August 1873, Page 3

NEW THEORY OF EARTHQUAKES.

{From the Newcastle Pilot, Aug 2.)

A new theory of earthquakes is just propounded. And while scientific men are said to be favorably disposed towards it, they are disinolined as the medical faculty to commit themselves to a decided expression of opinion. Modern science in self-defence had need be like the oraoles of old time, somewhat ambiguous. Only one thing holds good till another upsets it. It has its fashions, as physic has its change of watering places. The generation of gases in vast underground caverns of the earth, and thair upheaval of its crust in the endeavor to escape, has been generally received as the popular explanation of earthquakes. The shivering motion was acoepted somewhat on the principle of water in a circular bowl whose sudden disturbance gives rise to the vessel's undulatory movement. Mr. Mailer, however, says our idea is all wrong. That earthquakes are rather owing to the gradual cooling process going on in the earth's more central parts, and rending its crust by contraction, from time to time. And to leave us no i estige of old idea, he further tells us how eruptions and volcanoes are not the result of upheavals but of subsidence. And this with the plaint of Mexioo on reoord—with mount Jorulls and its hundred petty " solfataras," that might lead us to question his assertion. . But really in these scientific days one is so bandied about from pillar to post, that it is safer to believe nothing long; or perhaps believe a little of everything, and muoh of nothing. We pick up our knowledge as dogs drink at the Nile—take a lap and pass on. The teachings of youth are •< pooh poohed" in manhood; while their substitutes come in their turn to be discarded for the confidential asserted novelties of a latter day.