West Coast Times FRIDAY, JUNE 25th, 1909. EARTHQUAKES.

West Coast Times, 25 June 1909, Page 2

West Coast Times FRIDAY, JUNE 25th, 1909. EARTHQUAKES.

Mb Clement Wkagge in a letter to an exchange says: — With respect to your kindly nptice of my name in connection with earthquakes in a recent issue of your journal, please allow me to say a few words.

I did say that probably the Missina earthquake was the last effort of the solar maximum mood to make itself felt in the Northern Hemisphere. And this because the solar maieimura had thfj.i already been piolonged f-y' over eighteen months, and could not reasonably be expected to last much longer. But (and much depends on this word) the sun's maximum period has been further prolonged, evidently by some force acting on the solar orb from without our solar system., and so long as abnormal storms continue to burst out in the sun so will seismic action be mainly felt north from the equator. Yet this state of affairs can\not by the, experience of all previous observations, last much longer, and when the approach of the solar minimum, already overdue, fairly sets in, then we may expect a transference of earthquake actioa in the main to the Southern Hemisphere. The seismic and -.volcanic action experienced in New Zealand during the last few months may be taken as an indication that the Bolar maximum is gradually yielding, and overlapping, »s it were the first dip of the incoming minimum. Fpllowing is my own working hypothesis, which I shall continue to hold 'in til it, is conclusively proved that there is a flaw, but at present I do not "admit any flaw : — The sun's maximum means earthquakes, volcanic action, and drovght in the Northern Hemisphere, and earth rest, much rain and floods in the Southern Hemisphere. The sun's minimum means earthquakes., volcanic action, and drought in the Southern Hemisphere, and earth rest, much rain and floods in the Northern Hemisphere. By "drought" is meant rain fall under the average, and it is not intended to imply that ' during either of the solar moods there will be no earthquakes in the himisphere opposite to that most likely to be affected, but that such, if they occur there, will be comparatively slight. In a word, I maintain — entirely on my ow*i hypothesis — that positive and negative etheric vibrations flung off by the' sun, the solar storms, and hydrogen fiaines, are panalogous to Marconi' waves on an enormous scale, and that they do in very fact control the inherent forces of Earth, which itself, having been flung off by the sun some 900,000,000 years ago, remains in harmony with its parent (as also do the other planets of our System). Further, that v-ben either the .maximum of %he minimum condition of the sun is abnormally prolonged or shortened our sun itself is affected, probably by a dark sun outside our solar system. . For whenever electrons or corpusctos are accelerated or retarded either positively, or negatively as by the sun's moods, wave-like disturbanecs are set up in the ether, which itself links together everything in the cosmos, and these are the great controlling forces of the universe. That our little planet,' with respect to its two hemispneres, plus and minus, comes within the same allpervading law there is no doubt.