EARTHQUAKES.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2422, 10 January 1882, Page 3

EARTHQUAKES.

[From the “Time*.”] At the recent meeting of the British Association a paper by Professor John Milne, of the Tokio Imperial Engineering College in Japan, was read, giving a very interesting account of his observations of earthquake shocks in his adopted country. Mr Milne is not alone in his habit of chronicling Japanese earthquakes. Japan has a speciality for that class of sensation ; and the Japanese, ho telle us, are proud of the fact. A short time ago it was reported that the Buddhists of the empire were purposing to despatch missionaries for the conversion of Europe to a belief in Nirvana, The letter we publish this morning from Mr Milue shows that, so far from aiming in practice at the blissful apathy after which Buddhism aspires, the leaders of Japanese opinion are unwilling to lose even a single thrill and throb of their actual physical existence. As if it were not enough to have to undergo a shock and a shake on an average twice a week, the learned men of Japan here instituted a society for enabling one and all to enjoy each other’s perturbations throughout the three or four thousand islands. An earthquake appears to be regarded as a national luxury which a locality has no right to monopolise for its own separate enjoyment. It is bound to record all its phenomena, to be examined and collated, in the reasonable hope that any exceptional circumstance of terror and peril may be reproduced hereafter elsewhere. A neighborhood which should have to return the blank cheques issued to it, according to our correspondent, void of any peculiar features would doubtless account itself discredited. Yedo, for instance, dees respectably with its sixty to a hundred shocks a year. But it manifestly holds only a suba subordinate rank, in the eyes of seismologists like Mr Milne, by the side of Nagasaki, which has been able to register a distinct convulsion almost every twenty-four hours. Europe lately has had more than its share of destructive earthquakes. At Oaaamicciola and at Agram the loss of life and of property was very serious ; the calamity of Chios was met by public subscriptions in London and Paris 5 and to-day we report in our letter from Rome some details of an earthquake in the Abrczzi, which has, it is said, wrecked the dwellings of 5000 peasants. It is clear that the earthshocks in this region have been abnormally active, and new interest, therefore, is drawn to the study of these phenomena. Switzerland has the honor of having commenced in Europe a general system of seismologioal observation. Professor Palmier! at Naples, and many other men of science throughout the world, had long previously been in the habit of remarking and analysing whatever details of thin kind came within their notive. But these phenomena of the earth can be properly studied only in the immediate vicinity of their occurrence. The astronomer surveys millions of miles of sky. The range of vision for the student of terrestrial disturbances is relatively infinitesimal. To gather his facts he ought to be able to recruit a multitude of coadjutors in every quarter. Japanese philosophers, it seems, have preceded the Helvetic Nature! Science Association in realizing this necessity. They certainly possess at home an area of exploration which may well provoke the envy of Geneva and Zurich. It must quicken their zeal to know that the field they are occupying has been hitherto scarcely skimmed on the surface, A few years hack earthquakes were supposed, except by the inner circle of science, to be disconnected caprices and casualties. The increase and acceleration of intercourse among populations, which has compelled them to feel their mutual proximity and affinity, has rendered them conscious also of the unity and contiguity of the vast interior economy of the earth they walk upon. Scientific axioms on the subject of earthquakes till very recently were mingled with hypotheses baaed on a narrow experience and with legends based on none. It is only within the last few years that men of science themselves have questioned the belief that an earthquake is the tremor of the globe’s crust over a rolling ocean of molten rock within. The newer theory of a solid earth is itself as yet rather hypothesis than established theory. Sir Jofan Lubbock’s reference to it as accepted doctrine, it may be remembered, elicited at once a positive contradiction from a more conservative philosopher. It continues to stand in. need of all the light which individual observers can bring to bear upon it. But, on whichever side the truth may lie, at all events individuals are much better prepared than formerly to act as volunteer compilers of data whether for or against. Bacon looked forward to a time when mankind should be grouped into universities engaged in the amassing of facts whence to deduce or induce general conclusions on the tendencies of matter. In some branches of physios hi* desire ia nearly attained as it is. Not an unwonted drop of dew can rise or rain fall or a star shoot without eome curious eye having tracked the incident. It is only a novel extension of the same habit of mind which is now combining students of nature, from Japan to Switzerland, into a vast academy for the record of the amplitude and period of every oscillation of the ground, whether solid or floating. The object of science is to know, not to do. It bes no necessary concern with the practical lessons to be learnt from the discoveries it makes. Its volunteer enumerators of particulars are frequently even more lovers of abstract truth than their chiefs. An enthusiastic Japanese seismologist would probably see little difference between the convulsions he watches in Ngasaki and the possible convulsions, other than economical, in the planet Saturn, except that he is fortunate in his dangerous nearness to the wonders he has to note. That nearness adds, however, a special attraction to the pursuit. There is a fascination in the sense that the enormous mass an the outer margin of which man dwells is being compelled to render an account of its pulsations and respirations. It has been defined as a symptom of health when the functions act spontaneously and rarely summon their owner to he conscious of their several movements. Englishmen inhabit a region which enjoys analogous conditions in respect of volcanic perturbations. An earthquake powerful enough to stir the pendulum of a clock is an event in these islands. Yet Englishmen, too, will not foil to understand the charm of listening to the faint echoes from the mysterious interior. It will be strange if the progress of seismology does not result in a rapid augmentation in the number of British earthquakes felt and duly measured. A tendency towards that change is already discernible. An earthquake in some sparsely peopled district of the United Kingdom may nowadays be commonly calculated upon for the vacation season. As the science develops perhaps it may be found to have for temperate climates themselves its practical and applied side. Nothing canid seem, indeed, less likely then that the breath and motion of the internal organism of any and every section of this globe should exert no influence upon its surface which it would benefit the dwellers upon it to discover. That mankind cannot turn aside an earthquake is no more reason against the advantage to be gained from familiarity with its humors than against the use of mapping out the intractable winds and tempests. But, until Japan led the way, not a step had been taken towards leaguing a whole people for the accumulation of the statistics required by science in order to frame its conclusions upon a subject which can hardly be remote from the interests of any part of the earth, and which to soma parts is vital. As it is, it is to bo desired rather Jthau expected that the curiosity of other countries having a similar personal intimacy with the working of earthquakes might bo incited by the Japanese example to writs the history of their details. Could South America be enlisted in the cause, much of the mystery would be speedily cleared up. Unfortunately, to hope that Spanish South Americans could be induced to take a lively concern in seismographs and seismometers would bo to anticipate the revival of miracles. The formation of such a society as Mr Mine describes tells, in truth, no less about Japanese nature than it will in due course about earthquakes. The institution and its growth are indicative of a nation which, although it has been introduced latdy to modern science, loot* already upon the whole circle of knowledge as its inheritance, which considers that for the j earth, and especially for Japanese earth, to I keep secrets undisclosed is to deprive it of an, I essential portion of its indefeasible rights.