EARTHQUAKES.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18895, 10 January 1927, Page 8

EARTHQUAKES.

RASH PREDICTIONS. SCIENTIFIC IMPOSSIBILITY. [THE PRESS Special Service] WELLINGTON, January 8. Yesterday's cable message to the effect that Professor Bendandi, an Italian seismologist, predicted 1927 as a year of severe seisinological disturbances, is, somewhat ridiculed by Dr. C. E. Adams, the Government Seismologist. He said that such prophecies had no scientific foundation; the work of seismologists did not lie in the realm of prophecy. A scanning of past records failed to show why any earthquakes shauld have been anticipated. Earthquakes being primarily due to the sudden release of gradually accumulated strain, it hardly seemed likely that any warning of the release would be given. "I do not know the professor who is mentioned as having made this prophecy," Dr. Adams went on to say, "but We are not in touch to any great extent with Italian seismologists. Our own policy with regard to earthquakes is to observe and to record, but not to waste time in making prophecies." Dr. Adams recalled the prophecy which was made by the late Dr. Omori, of Japan, in 1922, after the disastrous earthquake there in that year. ' Because the country had suffered a, severe earthquake at that time, he had said Japan would be immune from further shocks. He went to Australia, and was there in 1923 when Japan wr.s shaken by the most disastrous earthquake in its history. This disposed of any attempts at accurate prediction in this direction. Omori was a careful and eminently systematic seismologist. But even he did not make such a conclusive and secure prediction as the cabled message from Rome. He believed he was correct in assuming that the strain had been released in certain districts, and that it would take a very long time for it to re-accumu-late; and, inded, on these grounds it seemed that Japan would be free from shocks for many years from that time.