Eminent Living Geologista — Professor John Milne. 341 



vibrations. From noticing tlie long distances to which the movements 

 of a violent shock reached, his attention was drawn to the fact that, 

 simultaneously with a great shock, in far parts of the world where 

 this could not be felt, other phenomena were noticed, such as the 

 movement of water, the deflection of scientific instruments, etc. 

 This led him to write in 1883, in his book on Earthquakes, 'it is 

 not unlikely that every large earthquake might, with proper 

 instrumental appliances, be recorded at any point on the land-surface 

 of our globe.' He now knows this to be a fact, and from the proof 

 of this surmise dates the progress of the new seismology."^ 



" After finding that the instrument recorded an earthquake some- 

 where, came the discovery that every earthquake gave rise to different 

 types of waves which travelled on diff'erent paths. There are waves 

 which proceed, straight through the earth, and waves coming I'ound its 

 surface. From this observation Professor Milne showed that we can 

 easily determine the distance of the seat of the disturbance from the 

 recording instrument. By this means the correlation of two or three 

 records from stations separated at sufficient distance gives the spot 

 from which the disturbance radiated. But to-day that spot can be 

 determined by one instrument alone. This discovery, as Professor 

 Milne enthusiastically explains, was made by Prince Galitzin, 

 a Russian seismologist, who points out that the first movement of 

 the indicator is in the direction of the origin." 



Professor Milne has certainly selected a spot for his home as far as 

 may be from these earthquake disturbances which have made him 

 famous. "It is a quaint conceit" (writes Mrs. Lou Henry Hover') 

 " that to the utter quiet of this pretty, tree-encircled old house, with 

 its grassy stone-stepped terraces, leading down towards the little 

 valley, with the great peaceful downs rising at its back, should come 

 the earthquakes of the world to be classified and studied. But come 

 they do, and a vast amount of work they make for Professor Milne 

 and his clever Japanese assistant, Mr. Hirota". 



Dr. Milne has been instrumental in establishing sixty or more 

 seismological stations throughout the world, whose reports come some 

 of them monthly, some twice yearly, and some when a chance boat 

 brings them. These stations include Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, 

 Cape of Good Hope, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Victoria, 

 Australia, Piji, Ascension, St. Helena, Seychelles, Mauritius, and 

 Cocos Islands ; in America there are stations at Baltimore, Philadelphia, 

 Mexico, and the Argentine. In Argentina there will shortly be five 

 stations. There is a seismological station at Honolulu and another on 

 Fanning Island in the middle of the Pacific. As a rule the stations 

 on isolated islands are erected and maintained by the Cable Companies, 

 who recognize the benefits to be derived from Professor Milne's 

 earthquake studies. There are a vast number of stations in Japan, and 

 the Japanese Government expend £5,000 annually on seismographical 

 research, and Russia does the same. There are several important 

 seismological stations in Russia, including Tashkend, Tiflis, and 



' Bulletin Seismological Society of America, Stanford University, California, 

 vol. ii, No. 1, p. 5, March, 1912. 



