195 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Earthquaki 



pictures of devastation presented to our 

 imaginations by the historical narratives of 

 the past, but is rather due to the sudden 

 revelation of the delusive nature of the in- 

 herent faith by which we had clung to a 

 belief in the immobility of the solid parts of 

 the earth. We are accustomed from early 

 childhood to draw a contrast between the 

 mobility of water and the immobility of the 

 soil on which we tread; and this feeling is 

 confirmed by the evidence of our senses. 

 When, therefore, we suddenly feel the 

 ground move beneath us, a mysterious and 

 natural force, with which we are previously 

 unacquainted, is revealed to us as an active 

 disturbance of stability. A moment destroys 

 the illusion of a whole life; our deceptive 

 faith in the repose of Nature vanishes, and 

 we feel transported, as it were, into a realm 

 of unknown destructive forces. Every sound 

 the faintest motion in the air arrests our 

 attention, and we no longer trust the ground 

 on which we stand. Animals, especially 

 dogs and swine, participate in the same 

 anxious disquietude; and even the croco- 

 diles of the Orinoco, which are at other 

 times as dumb as our little lizards, leave 

 the trembling bed of the river, and run with 

 loud cries into the adjacent forests. To man 

 the earthquake conveys an idea of some uni- 

 versal and unlimited danger. We may flee 

 from the crater of a volcano in active erup- 

 tion, or from the dwelling whose destruction 

 is threatened by the approach of the lava 

 stream; but in an earthquake, direct our 

 flight whithersoever we will, we still feel 

 as if we trod upon the very focus of destruc- 

 tion. HUMBOLDT Cosmos, vol. i, p. 215. 

 (H., 1897.) 



956. EARTHQUAKE'S WIDE- 

 REACHING EFFECT Vast Destruction of 

 Human Life. The great earthquake which 

 destroyed the city of Lisbon on the 1st of 

 November, 1755, was felt in the Alps, on the 

 coast of Sweden, in the Antilles, Antigua, 

 Barbados, and Martinique; in the great 

 Canadian Lakes, in Thuringia, in the flat 

 country of Northern Germany, and in the 

 small inland lakes on the shores of the Bal- 

 tic. Remote springs were interrupted in their 

 flow, a phenomenon attending earthquakes 

 which had been noticed among the ancients 

 by Demetrius the Callatian. The hot 

 springs of Toplitz dried up, and returned, 

 inundating everything around, and having 

 their waters colored with iron ocher. In 

 Cadiz the sea rose to an elevation of sixty- 

 four feet, while in the Antilles, where the 

 tide usually rises only from twenty-six to 

 twenty-eight inches, it suddenly rose above 

 twenty feet, the water being of an inky 

 blackness. It has been computed that on the 

 1st of November, 1755, a portion of the 

 earth's surface, four times greater than 

 that of Europe, was simultaneously shaken. 

 As yet there is no manifestation of force 

 known to us, including even the murderous 

 inventions of our own race, by which a 

 greater number of people have been killed 



in the short space of a few minutes : sixty 

 thousand were destroyed in Sicily in 1693, 

 from thirty to forty thousand in the earth- 

 quake of Riobamba in 1797, and probably 

 five times as many in Asia Minor and Syria, 

 under Tiberius and Justinian the elder, 

 about the years 19 and 526. HUMBOLDT 

 Cosmos, vol. i, p. 211. (H., 1897.) 



95 7 . EARTHQUAKES, BENEFICENT 

 EFFECTS OF Continents Maintained by 

 Their Reproductive Power Good from 

 Seeming Evil. But for earthquakes our con- 

 tinents would continually however slowly 

 diminish in extent through the action of 

 the sea-waves upon their borders, and of 

 rain and rivers on their interior surfaces. 

 " Had the primeval world been constructed 

 as it now exists," says Sir John Herschel, 

 " time enough has elapsed, and force enough, 

 directed to that end, has been in activity, to 

 have long ago destroyed every vestige of 

 land." It is to the reproductive energy of 

 the earth's internal forces that we are alone 

 indebted for the very existence of dry land. 

 To the same cause, undoubtedly, we owe that 

 gradual process of change in the configura- 

 tion of continents and oceans which has been 

 for ages and still is in progress a process 

 the benefit derived from which cannot pos- 

 sibly be called in question. Our forests and 

 our fields derive their nourishment from 

 soils prepared, for long ages, beneath the 

 waves of ocean; our stores of coal and of 

 many other* important minerals have been 

 in like manner prepared for our use during 

 the long intervals of their submergence ; we 

 build our houses even with materials many 

 of which owe their perfect adaptation to 

 our wants to the manner in which they have 

 been slowly deposited on what was once the 

 bed of ocean, and compressed to a due solid- 

 ity and firmness of texture beneath its 

 depths. ... So far from dreading lest 

 the earth's subterranean forces should ac- 

 quire new energies, we ought rather to fear 

 lest they should lose their force. PROCTOR 

 Notes on Earthquakes, p. 6. (Hum., 1887.) 



958. EARTHQUAKES, JAPANESE 

 BUILDINGS UNHARMED BY Peril Ac- 

 cepted as a Common Incident of Life. The 

 ordinary Japanese house consists of a light 

 framework of 4- or 5-inch scantling, built to- 

 gether without struts or ties, all the tim- 

 bers crossing each other at right angles. 

 The spaces are filled in with wattlework of 

 bamboo, and this is plastered over with 

 mud. This construction stands on the top 

 of a row of boulders or of square stones, 

 driven into the surface soil to a distance 

 varying from a few inches to a foot. The 

 whole arrangement is so light that it is not 

 an uncommon thing to see a large house 

 rolled along from one position to another on 

 wooden rollers. In buildings such as these, 

 after a series of small earthquake shocks, 

 we could hardly expect to find more frac- 

 tures than in a wicker basket. ... So 

 far as my own experience has gone, I must 



