THE LATE EARTHQUAKES IN CANTERBURY.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 1909, 18 June 1869, Page 2

THE LATE EARTHQUAKES IN CANTERBURY.

Dr Julius Haast furnishes the Lyttelton Times with an elaborate report on the above subject, and we make the following extracts from it :

The morning of this date, the sth of June, was remarkably clear and beautiful, with a lining barometer. When at 830 sec", a.m., a considerable eartbqu ke shock, the mor.t severe I ever felt in Canterbury, visited Christchurch and its neighbo hood. This shock coining f rom the south, lasted abo-ff tbrre to four seconds ;it w r as succeeded aLer a short interval of two or three seconds epose, oy a slight tremor of very sl'O t dwa.irn.

Aiothe- 1 sight vbrftiou of a s milar nature war experienc'd 7.16 minutes p.m. I have been to'd that towards 12.30 p.m., a number of feeb’e shocks was e;;pe fenced, Widen, however, I d : d rut obse -ve, although at t i at tine i was simhng in my office and

\vr i) ug. F.-o-'.i the observation I was alve io make, the principal and fir-,t shock Lad, as near as pos ihle, a magneto sooth and north direction, ov 'com south lod’g. west to north 15 deg. east. This fist port on of the vibration in question was i.mm 'i.tely fol owed by a. lO her, winch came from the east, or at right angles to the firvt. As this second portmn of the vibratory jar has a'so done some harm in a f'W stone buildings and ch'mnrys, many pe’sons in Christchurch therefore believe that this was the principal dveociou, but I think I shall be able to show that the er rthquake came from the south, and that the direction was a secondary one. I hha’l confine myself in this com* munrcatiou to my expedience in my own house and ’ts ne'ghborhood only. As far as I could observe, no hollow subterranean rumbling sound preceded or’accompanied the earthquake, although in the latter case it may easily have been drowned by the creaking of the timber, the ringing of the house be'Js, and the falling and breaking of numerous objects, i Mr George Dunnage told me, however, tcat he heard d’&tiuctly this low subterranean souod in his house in the river Styx, near the Christchurch and Kaiapoi road. As before observed, the first movement was from the south to the north, the ground seemed to rise obliquely and then to return immediately with a wave-like motion.

During the limt part of this shock, which seemed to me by far the most severe of the whole earthquake in vibration, the greatest damage was done, as most of the objects were then thrown down.

I stated bo Tore that the direction of the earthquake had been as near as possible S. 15 deg. W. to N, 15 deg. E., and your readers would doubtless like to know how I obtained that result.

As boibes, from their inertia, fall usually backwards, or in the direction from which the shock comes, it is evident that the position of such bodies after their fad will give us that direction. It is on this rule that the scisometer has been constructed, a, very useful instrument to measure the direction and nwensity of earthquake vibrations. Al.hough I have no such instrument in my house, a milk-can filled nearly to the brim acted as such in an exceUent manner. The milk had d ; stinctly ruu fretn N. 158 deg. E. to S. 15 deg. W. over (he table in an unbroken stream, and only a few scattered drops were found in the opposite directions. That the eaithquake was not felt so severely in Lyttelton as in the plains may be accounted for by the fact that the former town is built upon volcanic rocks, which have a far greater elasticity than sand and gravel on which Ch istchureh stands. It thus appears that this ear.hquake is simply the dynamic effect of some local abyss?• logical d ; sturbance in or near our neighbourhood, such as happens all over the globe by changes in the earth’s crust, and generally at a very great depth below us. I think there is, therefore,, no cause for the anxiety expressed to me by several of my fellow citizens, that this earthquake miaht be the beginning of a series of still more vehement disturbances by which"we are to he visited, although it is possible that a few minor ones m-y still follow in the course of the next few days. Others be'ieve that the origin of this earthquake is connected in some way with Bank’s Peninsula, an extinct volcanic system of consit'erable extent, which opinion in this instance I consider equally erroneous. I may, however, state that the primary direction of that disturbance closely corre-:-ponds to that longitudinal volcanic region, which from the autardc volcanoes Erebus and Te.ror, stretches across the intermediate islands, also of volcanic origin, to New Zealand, and on which line Bank’s Peninsula is situated.