i6 



NATURE 



[March 2, 191 1 



orang' — it is unbelic\;il)Ic and iiiap|)(r-.iti-, aiui conse- 

 quently is one of Ilic liw liiu iin\ inriii^ stories in 

 Kipling's otherwise admirable and truthful studies of 

 the East. 



But the author of " Distini^^uished Animals " cannot 

 be held responsible for Mr. Kipling's rare slip in 

 accuracy, and it is pleasanter to assert the general 

 interest which the work under review possesses (apart 

 from its remarkably good illustrations) for those who 

 are not well acquainted with the history and habits of 

 that marvellous collection of living creatures to be 

 seen in Regent's Park. H. H. Johnston. 



THE KANGKA EARTHQUAKE OF APRIL 4, 

 1905.1 



"pv ESTRUCTIVE earthquakes are, fortunately, 

 ■■-^ rare events, and when a civilised country is 

 visited by one, the talk of investigating and of writ- 

 ing the report, which is now considered obligatory, 



the popular notion that earthquakes are always a 

 necessarily due to fracture. Yet even where faulting 

 is observable there are generally indications that the 

 fault is certainly not the sole cause, if it may be 

 properly regarded as a cause of the earthquake; and 

 now we have an account of a shock comparable in 

 extent and violence with the Californian earthquake 

 exaniin((l with great care and thoroughness of which 

 the reporter writes that : — 



it may come as a surprise to many to be assured that the 

 Kangra earthquake presents no evidence at all in support 

 of this view : not a single railway has recorded any 

 damage to the track, not a single road or path has been 

 deflected, raised or lowered, no rivers or streams have 

 changed their courses or been temporarily dammed up — 

 except as due directly to landslips from slopes of such 

 steepness that they might as easily have occurred after a 

 heavy torrential rainstorm. 



The greater part of the report is taken up with 

 details of damage done to buildings, the sensations 



Fig. 1. — Fallen Rock near Manoli. From " The Kangra Earthquake of April 4, iqo5. 



falls necessarily on someone who has often more 

 regular occupation. Hence it comes that we have 

 to wait years for a connected account of a great 

 earthquake, and that which visited the Punjab on 

 April 4, 1905, is no exception ; after the lapse of more 

 than five years, w-ith all the dignified delay, and, it 

 must in fairness be added, all the thoroughness worthy 

 of a great Government, the report on this earthquake, 

 by Mr. C. S. Middlemiss, has appeared. 



Nor could the memoirs have appeared more oppor- 

 tunely. The glamour of the great disaster which 

 followed orf the Californian earthquake, the remark- 

 able character of the earth-movements which took 

 place along the length of the San Andreas fault, and 

 especially the fact that a very large part of the pecu- 

 liarities -f distribution of the shock seemed explicable 

 o-i the hypothesis that fault and earthquake were 

 related as cause and effect, have all given impetus to 



1 Memoirs of the Geological Su'vey of India, vol. xxxviii. "The Kangra 

 Earthquake of April 4, 1905." By C. S. Middlemiss. Pp, x4-40Q + xxi-j-3o 

 plates. (Calcutta : Geological Survey ; I-onHon : Kegan Paul and Co 

 Ltd. ; Berlin : Friedlander and Sohn, 1910.) Price Rs. 5. 



NO. 2157, VOL. 86] 



of observers and other stock subjects, in all of which 

 little or nothing of novelty can be found; but when 

 we come to the discussion of the cause of the earth- 

 quake there is much that is interesting and sugges- 

 tive. The author, after discussing the nature of the 

 origin, finally adopts the conclusion that there were 

 two centres of origin, one in the Kangra valley and 

 the other in the Dehra Dun. He points out that 

 these two regions lie in imbayments of the great 

 faulted boundary between the rocks of the Himalayas 

 proper and the Tertiary beds originally formed as 

 fringing deposits of Himalayan debris. ^ Moreover, it 

 is just in these imbayments that an exceptional 

 development of coarse boulder deposits indicates the 

 position where great rivers issued from the mountains, 

 where sedimentation was in excess, and where, in the 

 subsequent compression and folding of strata, irregu- 

 larities of packing might be expected to occur. So 

 the conclusion is reached that the earthquake was a 

 tectonic one, due to a sudden rupture or release of 



1 Nature, March i, 1906 (vol. Ixxiii., p. 418). 



