The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1896-10-10

What do the recent frequent earth
quakes along the Asiatic coast mean?
They are signs that the earth is
growing old" answered Robert z.
Whitfield, curator of the American Mu-
scum of Natural History. Nearly all
earthquakes of modern times have been
the effects of the cooling process which
has resulted in fractures and displace-
ments, and especially in subsistence.
Fractures allow salt water to reach the
interior OF the earth's crust, where
contact with certain minerals forms
muriatic, sulphuric and other acids.
Great pressure is produced and seisma-
tic effect is the result"
Then these earthquakes results OF
the contraction of mother earth, due
10 the cooling process that is surely
and unremittingly going on prove that
Stutzke OF the Christian Apostolic Con-
gregation is right when he teaches that
general freeze OUT will end all
earthly life. He is, on scientific au-
thority unquestionably right as to the
ultimate result, but slightly wrong as
to the date He is now waiting for the
end of the fifty days probation that is
following the unfufilled prophecy OF
the end of all things on September 2,
but he must, according to that same
authority, make each of these days
about fifty millions of years.
Dr. Samuel Kneeland, who has de-
voted as much study to earthquakes
as any living man, and who is an au-
thority on seismatic phenomena, says:
From a study of volcanic and earth
quake phenomena on the moon sclen-
tific men of eminence have ventured
to tell the future of our EARTH open
ing to the imagination vistas of sub
lime and awful catastrophes, ending in
the death of the planet and the de-
struction of all life upon its surface
a type of the final doom of the whole
solar system
Professor Proctor really outdoes
Stutzke-eXcepting that his date is less
interesting he says:
I'VE may see in our satellite what
the earth may become if it goes on
cooling at the present rate in about
twenty-five hundred million years
it's present age being some five hun
dred millions. Our planet therefore
bears in it's bosom the seed of decay
and death; slowly but surely, it is
failing with it's vital heat; the volcano
and earthquake are the symptoms of
final destruction as a planet, the first
as it were a breathing, the last the
paroXysmal condensation of the It's
sues of our bounteful mother, now in
the prime of her life.
THE earth has already passed
through the vaporous or sun stage
the fiery stage, like Jupiter and Sat
urn. 1t is now in the life supporting
stage. Afterward in it's old age it
must dry up like Mars and Mercury.
and finally will die. like the moon,
with entire absence of water, atmos-
phere and life, and with great dimi-
mutton of volume.
The coming of the ice from the poles,
as foretOld by Stutzke, is rather more
graphically described by a French
writer, who says:
LAS the cooling progresses a sheet
of snow and ice from north and south
will descend from the mountains upon
the tablelands and the valleys driv-
ing before it life and civilization, and
covering forever the cities and nations
that it meets in it's passage. All life
and human activity will press insen-
sibly toward the intercepted zone.
st. Petersburg, Berlin, London, Paris.
Vienna, Constantinople, Rome and the
great cities of the new world will fall
asleep in succession under that eternal
shroud.
During very many ages equatorial
humanity will undertake arctic eXpe-
ditions to find under the ice the place
of Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux and Mar
settles. The seacoast will have
changed and the geographical in the
equatorial zone, up to the day when
the last family. nearly dead with cold
and hunger, will sit on the shore of the
last sea, in the rays of the sun, which
will thereafter shine here on a dead
cold earth, revOlvinglike a satellite
moon about sun unseen by mortal
eyes. and distributing to an extin-
guiShed planet a useless heat
1t requires the poet to complete the
picture roughly drawn in ignorance by
Stutzke and graphically described by
the scientist. and in lofty measure sing
one man, and of earth when that last
man is no more conscious soul. but
part of the "chaos of hard clay"
The suns eye had a sickly glare
The earth with age was wan.
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man.
So writes Campbell of the last man
who shall live on earth.
The world was void,
The populous and powerful was a
lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless,
lifeless,
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
Thus Byron completes the picture