The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1882-11-16
>Earthquakes.

Earthquakes have been the despair Of
science. We could recognize an earth
quake when it shook house about our
ears, or swallowed up city, but we
could not tell what caused the earth
quake. This was very humiliating
state of things, for it implied that Sci
epce, which, when it is spelled with a
capital s, is, according to Mr.. Bob
Ingersoll and his disciples, always in.
fallible, did not know anything, and
was. on the whole. not much better than
Revelation.
OF course, scientific persons invented
quantities of theories to account for
earthquakes. There was the theory that
they were produced by steam. A guam
tity of sea-water, leaking through tho
bottom of the ocean and striking the
melted rock with which the center of the
earth is filled, would be instantly con-
verted into steam, and this steam, pro
vided it could not find vent through a
convenient volcano, would burst the
earth open and shake everything on its
surface in the neighborhood OF the ex
plosion. This was the steam theory of
earthq uakes, and it was not without its
merits. Those who held it failed, how
ever, to explain how the bottom OF the
ocean became leaky ut one time and per-
fectly tight day or two afterward; and
why the earth often failed to open dur
ing an earthquake to permit the escape
Of steam.
Then there was the chemical theory of
earthq uakes. 1t was assumed that q
quantity of nitric acid, distilled in the
interior of the earth. would occasionally
fall on bale of cotton, and convert it
into gun cotton, which would explode
and produce the usual earthquake phe-
nomena; or that sulphur, saltpetre, and
charcoal would accidentally become
mixed in close proximity to the central
fires, and the resulting gunpowder
would take fire. This chemical theory
was q beautiful one, but in order to be-
lieve it one had to possess an exception
ally lively imagination, and it therefore
had fewer partisans than had the steam
theory.
Then there was the electric theory. A
California scientific person asserted that
earthquakes were produced by electricity
and that they were becoming infrequent
in California because the rails Of the Pa
clfic railroad acted as conductors and
carried the superfluous California cleo.
tricity safely away. The fault OF the
theory was that it did not explain any.
thing. Electricity is the cat of the sol
entific world. When no one can posi-
bly, tell how any given phenomenon 10
produced, scientific persons take refuge
in the assertion that it 10 caused by cleo
tricity; Just o. the cook asserts that the
nour-barrel, which is found to be sus-
piciously empty, has been emptied by
the cat. How electricity could cause an
earthquake no one has pretended to ex-
plain, and no one viii ever make the Mt
tempt.
In the place of these unsatisfactory
theories We have at least plausible and
perfectly satisfactory one, devised by an
English scientific person. He in
forms MS that the crust Of the
earth is elastic. just in the same way
that hollow rubber ball 10 elastic. II
will yield TO pressure in one place, and
will bulge out ct another. The pressure
which produces earthquake il ordinarily
supplied by the atmosphere or the tides,
Lea ne suppose. for example, tha(
there should be tomorrow heavy baro'
! mstic pressure over the continent d