The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-06-27
THE EARTH CRUMBLING
HUGE SECTIONS SLOWLY AND SURE
LY SLIPPING CENTERWARDS.
Facts Regarding the Planets Crust
Revealed to Science by Many
Earthquake Movements.
Boston Herald.

Boston Herald.
There was a time, hardly a quarter of
century ago, when the belief was prevalent
that all that there was of living on the
earth was foated on a thin crust, perhaps
fifty or one hundred miles thick. To-day
there is hardly a scientist who is not pre-
pared to accept the view that our planet
is virtually solid to its core, or that it
might be so without the condition doing
violence to any known facts of astronomy,
physics or geology.
Does this imply that earth movements
are no longer possible; that those vast dis
turbances and dislocations have come to an
end which in past periods of the earth's
history have repeatedly or successfully
lowered up high mountain walls, raised
beaches hundreds of thousands of feet
above water level and separated continents
and entombed oceanic waters?
Even in our own day it requires no scien-
tifc knowledge to inform us that earth
movements of one kind another are
still taking place. and on scale which
might readily be taken 10 be confrmative
of the belief in "thinly floating crust.
Earthquake movements are, OF all terres-
trial oscillations, the most familiar to US.
Japan has it's three hundred or four hun
dred shocks yearly, sometimes, indeed,
monthly and if the minor shocks are taken
count of nearly that number are known
to take place in exceptional single days.
Greece follows closely in the race, and
other regions of the earth's surface, the
north of South America, for example, lag
but little behind.
Most of these shocks, however, represent
but insignificant movements of the land
surface; a quarter of an inch, half OF an
lot
to make the earthquake apparently catas-
trophic and truly catastrophe so tar as
the work of destruction is concerned.
Buildings are overturned, walls are rent
asunder and bridges undermined in their
supporting buttresses-as witness the
power of the weak earthquake of the
Riviera of 1886.
elsewhere by Prof. George Darwin make
it certain that in so far as such tremors
are concerned the planet is in a state of
continuous unrest and that at no .ciace,
not even in a pit or deep shaft, and at no
time, is 1t exempt in such way that
tremors or minor earthquakes cannot be
detected by instruments of only q moderate
degree of precision or fineness. 1t is, how
ever, fact that, following in the wake
Of many earthquakes, and in some cases,
probably, originating the earthquakes
themselves rather than being made by
them, are permanent displacements of the
land which have considerable value rises
and falls of from ten to twenty feet or
more having been positively determined
In the earthquake of Corinth in Greece
in 1861. drop OF the land of two feet was
recorded over an area of thirteen square
kilometers; in Calabria, in the early part
OF the last century, subsistence of the
land of full twenty-nine feet was regis
tered, and, again. in 1Sl1-12. the earthquake
which extended for hundreds of miles
along the valley of the Mississippi left its
impress by lowering the surface of a con-
siderable area in southern Illinois, and
forming there lake basins of no insignffi-
cant area. Movements of this kind are in
most cases the expression of actual break
ages in the rocky cruSt-fractureS through
the rock of possibly thousands of feet OF
thickness which have allowed of the dis
placement taking place. But how insig-
nifcant are these breaks when contrasted
with those. of past periods OF the earth's
history, where the vertical dispIace merlts
OF the rock in a single fracture are as
much as 10000 and 10000 feet-nay, so, OOt
or 10000 feet in some instances.
But yet these major breaks were not
made in an instant: hundreds OF years, Oh
perhaps even thousands. may have been