XXIII. 



THE E-VriTHQUAKE OF THE 17th OF DECEMBEK, 1896, 

 AS IT AFFECTED THE COUNTY OF HERTFORD. 



By Herbert George Fordham. 



Read at St. Albans, 6th April, 1897. 



PLATE V. 



Introduction^. 



The efPects of earthquakes such as we cxpei'ience in the British 

 Isles are commonly so slight and insignificant, as compared with 

 those which occur in other parts of the world, that it can hardly 

 be expected that any deductions of direct scientific value can be 

 obtained from their consideration. 



J^Tevertheless, in the aggregate of knowledge no fact, or collection 

 of facts, is to be despised, and we should not be doing our duty in 

 Hertfordshire were we to fail in recording all that is known of 

 even so trifling a shock as that of the ITtli of December. 1896, as 

 its effects were felt within the county and on its borders. We may 

 hope that, although no substantial addition to our information on 

 the subject of earthquakes can be expected from what is recorded 

 in the following pages, the results of this inquiry may yet help 

 in a small way to the building up of knowledge, and in the 

 accumulation of that mass of minor details upon which important 

 advances in information are based. 



HaA-ing, on a fonner occasion, undertaken to deal with phenomena 

 which, at first attributed to terrestrial movement, ultimately turned 

 out to owe their origin to a very different cause,* I have now been 

 asked to collect such information as may be available as to the 

 earthquake of the 17th December. Accordingly, I have, through 

 the public Press and the monthly circulars of our Society, appealed 

 generally to the public, and especially to our members and coiTe- 

 spondents, for information as to the localities at which the shock 

 was experienced in the early morning of Thursday, 1 7th December, 

 1896, and as to its effects and character. A similar inquiry, ex- 

 tending to the whole kingdom, has been undertaken by Mr. Charles 

 Da\-ison, Sc.D., F.G.S., of 373, Gillott Uoad, Birmingham, Secretary 

 of the British Association Seismological Investigation Committee. 



A Committee on Earthquakes was first appointed at the Leeds 

 meeting of the British Association (1890), but with a somewhat 

 limited reference (that of establishing instruments for the systematic 

 recording of earth tremors in this country). Five Reports of the 

 Committee have been presented to the Association, dealing mainly 

 with the preliminary question of the instruments available for 

 recording earth tremors. During fifteen years up to 1 895, another 



* See " The Meteorite of the 20th of November, 1887 " (' Traus. Herts Nat. 

 Hist. Soc.,' Vol. V, p. 33). 



