JOHN MILNE 719 



individual earthquakes. With one exception he never made 

 a detailed study of any shock. The nature of earthquake motion 

 in general, the relations between earthquakes and other pheno- 

 mena, the peculiarities of their distribution in time and space, 

 presented greater attractions to him than the investigation of 

 an earthquake unit. 



It has been said of Milne that he was a man who never 

 perfected anything; and in a very limited sense this was true. 

 He preferred sometimes to start an inquiry and to leave others 

 to finish it. His two great catalogues, of Japanese earthquakes 

 and of destructive earthquakes, are monuments of detailed and 

 patient labour ; but, in both cases, his own analysis was slight. 

 He was content to provide the materials which others were to 

 use in building. He was a man of large views. He cannot be 

 held to have proved that the frequency of great earthquakes is 

 connected with the small migrations of the earth's pole or that 

 there is any bond between the occurrence of earthquakes in 

 regions so remote as the east and west margins of the Pacific. 

 But it is something to have imagined such relations, to have 

 tested their reality as far as his materials would allow, and thus 

 to provide promising subjects of inquiry for a future of wider 

 knowledge. 



Several chapters of seismology, if they do not owe their origin 

 to Milne, were largely written by him. His part in the construc- 

 tion of seismographs was a prominent one, and the extent and 

 precision of our knowledge as to the nature of earthquake motion 

 were to no slight extent the result of his labours. He was the 

 first to realise that the vibrations of a great earthquake may be 

 recorded in any part of the globe, the first also to carry a world- 

 wide seismic survey into execution. What all this means, we 

 shall only fully understand when the accumulation of many 

 records shall enable us to unravel the mystery of the nature of 

 the earth's interior. 



The practical applications of his science always possessed a 

 charm for a man so human as Milne. He devised a form of 

 seismograph for registering the vibrations of railway-trains, and 

 for discovering any defects that may exist in the engine or 

 permanent way. His study of the fracture of deep-sea cables by 

 earthquakes and other earth-movements is unique. But it was 

 by his design of houses, bridges, etc., that will withstand the 

 rough and sudden touch of earthquakes that he has chiefly earned 



