Bisbee daily review., 1907-10-20
WISE MEN DISPUTE
 EARTHQUAKE CAUSES

For almost a century scientists gen. erally have held that the earth is cool ing, and threfore slowly contracting In this way they explain earthquakes and mountain formations Now comes Prof See with an elaborate argument more exhaustive than that of Lord Kelvin, tending to show that the eff fscts cf secula- cooling nf the ginhe are insensible. and totally denying the contraction of the earth.
 Prof. Sees memoirs may be sum- marked as follows: The earth's temperature has an elliptical distEtbu. ton within, being about $500 degrees Fahrenheit at the center, and falling of toward the surface, where it is zero. As the earth slowly cooled, the crust was the only part which exper. fenced an appreciable fall in temper. ature.
 Hence the crust is thin, with thick. ness of not more than 20 miles, which agrees with the depth deduced from the study of the world shaking earth quafkts. The great earthquakes JJIla2llsses orig mate at the depth of about 20 miles, and none is known of a depth exceed. ing 40 miles.
 
 cial origin, and no shakes have a deep CT source, it follows that htere is no deep seated contraction of the earth, Consequently all changes in the crust are due to ordinary earthquakes, and to no other cause.
 Secular cooling is infinitely slow and affects only the crust, whereas worId-shaking earthquakes proceed from the layer just beneath the crust As earthquakes occur mainly along the seacoast, they cannot depend on secular cooling. but must be due to the expulsion of lava from beneath the oceans.
 Hence great earthquakes are not due to secular cooling at all, but to the leakage of the oceans, which pro duces steam beneath the crust. This eventually pushes out at the sides and raises mountains along the coasts.
 As the effects of secular cooling are insensible, it follows that the earth is not contracting, af Aeld in the books for three generas,Jns. Dr. See shows. indeed, that at an early stage of the earths history contraction was going on, but it ceased after our plan ct became encrusted. In fact, he thinks that so far from contracting, the earth may now be slightly expand ing. owing to the formation of pumice everywhere beneath the crust.
 The old theories that mountains are due to the secular cooling and con traction of the globe must therefore be abandoned. The mountains are formed by the expulsion of lava from beneath the sea, and hence they are parallel to the coast.
 Dr. See concludes by a mathemati- cal inquiry that the age of our en- crusted earth does not exceed some 10000. .OOO years, which is a much shorter time than geologists have gen erally allowed. He also finds that ra- dium plays no important part in the development of the globe.
 Prof. See translates Aristotle's theo- " of earthquakes, which has never before been made accessible to Eng fish readers. The Greeks all held that earthquakes were due to the az itation of vapors within the earth, which tended to escape and diffuse themselves in the atmosphere. Aris- totle observed the eruption of vol cano and concluded from the vapor mo- ticed to escape that all earthquakes were due to the same cause as that producing eruptiOns.
 When Plato was 54 and at the head of the Academy in Athens and Aristo- tie was a boy II years old the Homeric city of Helike, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, was thrown down by an earthquake and over whelmed by a seismic sea wave.
 The cause of this disaster perplexed the Athenian sages, and has remained one of the mysteries of the centuries. Now comes Prof. See, who shows that it was due simply to the expulsion of lava from beneath the Gulf of Corinth, which thus made the sea bottom un- stable, and when it gave way it also carried the shore on which Helike stood; indeed, the city was first de vastated by the movement of lava be- heath the crust and aTterward subsid- d about 100 feet, so that it was GOV cred by the waves until only the tops of trees remained above water.
 Besides the sinking of Helike, other cases of the subsistence of the land are mentioned, ana III tue UUmCIUUETis note attention is called to the eieTa- tion of the mountain and the sinking of the sea bottom now going on in the viciity of the Alextian and Kurile Is lands, in the North Pacific.