The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1915-04-22
NATURES COMMISSIONS.
Some Interesting Facts About Speed
of Earthquakes.

Now. there are two curious points
we'll worth noting about earthquake es
which are not generally known.
In the first place, the more over
whelming the consequences o. an
earthquake may be in human and
material sense the less interesting it
is usually to the chronological expert:
in the second place. the range of the
shock is in inverse ratio to the
amount of destruction which it causc 5
on the earth's surface.
For the scientist who has special
lied in the investigation of seismic
disturbances will tell you that the
really big earthquakes occur most
frequently, not in populous countries
like Italy and Japan, but in desolate
regions far from the familiar CEN
tres of civilization or down in the
depths of the ocean.
The fact that so many thousands
of lives have been lost in an earth
quake has less significance for the
expert-who is concerned with the
scientific rather than the human con-
seouences of the convulsion-than
the effects which may have been made
ON the transformations of the earth
we inhabit.
Then the shocks which have visi-
bly been the most violent have been
the morst restricted in actual range
of earth-movement. Take the recent
disaster. Although the Avezzano
disaster was telling its story on that
delicately-sensitive instrument known
as the seismograph in England long
before the news of the latest earth
quake had reached the country by
cable, the writing on the tablets OF
the seismograph was less pronounced
and definite in character than are
many records made by shocks OF
which YOU and the rest of the news
paper-reading public have never even
heard, since they cause no damage
either to life or property.
But the earthquake shock which
was felt in 1896 in London. and in
many parts of England and Wales.
though nowhere so severely as IN
Herefordshire and Worcestershire
where crockery-ware was broken and
people were thrown out Of their beds
had the extraordinary travelling
power of extending over an area OF
100000 square miles.
There are, you must know, such
things as earth-waves as we'll as
ether-waves. But while the ether
waves have by the genius of Mar
conf been harnessed into the service
of mankind, no scientist has yet dis
covered any uses for earth-waves, or
even any means of utilizing them.
The shock of seismic disturbance
travels in waves at the rate of two
miles a second in the actual vicinity
of the disturbance and this rate rapid
" diminishes as the distance travel
led bv the earth-waves increases.
The deeper the originating move
ment happens to be the farther the
shock travels; but the deeper the
movement, on the other hand. the
less extensive, and usually the less
serious, from the point of view OF
loss of life, is the visible effect on
the earth's surface.
Thus we have the apparent contra
diction that the Herefordshire earth
quake of 1S96-so called because II
is believed to have originated in that
border county, if not in the bowels
of the Black mountains of Wales
was, from a scientific point of view,
a bigger affair than the Avezzano, or
even Messina.
The largest recorded displacement
of land surface was that consequent
upon the Indian earthquake of 1897,
when an area as big as this whole OF
Yorkshire was turned, so to speak,
completely upside down.
Yet who can give name to that
earthquake today, though every
schoolboy has heard of buried Pom
neil of the Lisbon and San Francis
as the seismagraph in England long
co earthquakes.-From Answers.
D.,> &C. N'rrnp