EARTHQUAKE EXPLORERS.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXVI, Issue 4469, 8 September 1911, Page 3 (Supplement)

EARTHQUAKE EXPLORERS.

k k "\Tf 7HY on earth did you study YV earthquakes? ” is a question (writes Professor Milne) which during the last thirty years has been put to mo more than any other. The simplest answer is that for twenty years of my life earthquakes were forced upon my attention. In 1875, together with many others of various nationalities, I was invited to assist Japan in her endeavour to learn something about the material side of Western civilisation. 1 had ]ust como home after two years’ bucking about in a fore-and-aft schooner on the coast ot Newfoundland and Labrador, but bemg young and vigorous 1 accepted the invitation, packed up and started off via Siberia, Central Asia, and some 1200 miles of China to take up my new appointment. Tho trip took eleven months. Or. ono section of 31 days there wore no roads, no houses, no bread, no vegetables, no washing, no undressing, plenty of snow, and from -10 to 50 deg. of frost. The same journey is now performed in a moroccobound gilt-icdged Grundo Vitesse in fourteen days. . I met with mv first earth tremble in Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia. It upset a few bottles and provided a subject for conversation, but it was bardly a hors d’oeuvre for the twenty years’ foast before me In Japan. Wh-’n I arrived in that country I had a glonois shako up the very first night. The name of the mansion tho Japanese Government bad provided for my reception was “ Yama-Gouohi,” or tho Mouth ot the Mountain. Yama-Gouchi creaked and groaned and rolled about, pictures seo-sawed on the walls, while the rings attached to a mosquito curtain jingled a high treble. I held on tightly, wondering what would happen next. There is nothing like an earthquake to fill you up with expectation. Of course after a few minutes it ended. The next morning I wondered whether I hid really ever lived or had only just risen from tho dead.

Very quickly, like all the other professorial consignments imported by Japan, I learned that in Japan, particularly at certain seasons, earthquakes came in groups. You could have them at breakfast, lunch, tea, supper, or in the middle of the night. An idea that earthquakes should be studied floated in the air. It was crystallised at the end of February, 1880. On the 22nd of that month an - earthquake occurred which made people more thoughtful than usual Yokohama practically lost all Its chimneys, many houses had been uprooted, streets wore filled with debris, w hile slopes from which trees and vegetation had si id den downwards looked as if they had been whitewashed. The interest in earthquakes was at a white heat, and I felt the psychological moment to establish an earthquake society had come at last. A meeting was convened and a large hall was packed. The American consul, General van Huron, took the chair. In minutes a set of rules drafted to suit the occasion was read and adopted, subscriptions were collected at the door, and the SeismolOgieal Society of Japan was established. It lived for fifteen years, and in the twenty volumcs < which it published you find the foundations or almost everything that has been done since. , . The successor to this society _ is the Earthquake Investigation Committee ol Tokio, which receives from the Japanosc Government an annual subsidy of at least £2OOO. Russia spends a somewhat similar sum, while earthquake investigation in Italy has for years past received departmental consideration. In fact, most of the civilised States in tlio world, as will ho testified by the arrival of foreign delegates to the mooting of the International Seismological Association, consider the study oi earthquakes of great importance. Among the delegates to this gathering are such men as Professor Reid, famous in connection with the San Francisco . earthquake; Dr. Omori, from Japan, and Prince Galitziu, of Russia. Mr. Napier Dennison comes from Victoria. P.C., and Sir George Darwin is one of the English delegates. The ordinary Englishman docs not think it necessary to study earthquakes because they are of such rare occurrence in his own country, entirely forgetting tho fact that the whole of British capital is not invested in these islands, and every year somehow or other he has to pay foil earthquake effects. The shareholders in British insurance companies v ere recently called upon to pay £12,(>OO <IOO for an earthquake which ruined rian Francisco, and £2,000,000 more fo~ destruction in Jamaica. British workers have contributed very much towards tho extension ol our knowledge of the planet on which we live. Tho British Association, which has issued 47 annual reports about earthquakes, at the present time enjoys the co-operation of about 00 stations fairly spaced over continents and oceanic islands. Becauso submarine earthquakes-now and again interrupt cables, and the iecords of these di.stiirbanccs not only indicate the position where an interruption took place,, hut enable- us to say they were due to natural causes, cable companies have generously assisted in the establishment of now stations. If a colony is suddenly isolated from tho remainder of the world by the failure of its cables, it is of groat importance for them to know whether this was due to natural causes or to an operation of war. It frequently happens that earthquake recoids have furnished definite information respecting destruction in distant places and corrected and extended telegraphic information about the same. Out friends in Germany have been quick to see tho advantages to be gamed by the study of earthquakes, and appealed to all the civilised States in tho world to join them in the formation of an International Association of Seismology. Tho permanent headquarters of this association are in Strasburg, and are supported by an incomo of about £IBOO per year, subscribed by about 23 different States. They have a station in Iceland, and hope to establish two more, one in Greenland and tho other in Asia Minor. Each year Strasburg publishes at least two largo catalogues of earthquakes. Recently at this central bureau a moving platform has heOii erected, on which it is proposed" to test earthquake instruments. Next year a map will be drawn which will show Strasburg as the centre of the* world. Should the GO stations which at tho present time cooperate with Great Britain be internationalised, our Foreign, . Colonial and India Offices may have to ask some office across tho Channel why their cablegrams.-did-not .go through; cable companies will have to seek advice from a similar source as to. .where they should or should not lay their cables; insurance companies, to proportion rates to risks, mav. have .to go abroad in connection with inquiries about the: frequency of earthquakes in different countries; while survivors from devastated districts wiU seek for'advice about rebuilding from the authorised centre of earthquake information, and those; who give advice may follow if tip . with engineers anefe materials for" recphstnirtlon.