THE

JOURNAL OF SCIENCE,

AND ANNALS OF

ASTRONOMY, BIOLOGY, GEOLOGY, INDUSTRIAL ARTS,
MANUFACTURES, AND TECHNOLOGY.

(MONTHLY, FORMERLY "THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.")

MDCCCLXXXIV.

THE

JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.

JANUARY, 1884.

I. EARTHQUAKES AND ELECTRICITY. By Colonel Arthur Parnell, late Royal Engineers.

(Concluded from vol. v., page 706.)

N"A Practical Treatise on Lightning Protection," by Henry W. Spang (Philadelphia, 1877), it is stated that Mr. Cromwell Varley, F.R.S. (whose lamented death has recently taken place), was of opinion that some earthquakes are due to subterraneous electrical discharges. He had found that powerful positive currents rushed through the Anglo-American cables towards England a few minutes before and a few minutes after the shocks of March 17th, 1871 (p. 29).

In "Nature" (No. 247, vol. x., 1874) Mr. H. H. Howorth expresses his opinion that the earth is shrinking about its equatorial region, and is being thrust out in the direction of the Poles; and he thinks that the distribution of this force may correspond with that of terrestrial magnetism. He quotes from Dr. Zöllner's paper in the "Philosophical Magazine," wherein it is stated that Kriel has given many instances of the coincidence of earthquakes with magnetic disturbances. Volcanoes are, according to Mr. Howorth, the mediate results of the shrinking of the earth; "earthquakes, on the contrary, are its immediate results, and go far to prove that terrestrial magnetism is to be correlated with the force which is shrinking the earth."

The article in the "Quarterly Review" for July, 1881, already mentioned, states that the most certain characters and accompaniments of earthquakes appear to be their VOL. VI. (THIRD SERIES).

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suddenness, the stifling heat and electric state of the atmosphere, and the sudden roar as of distant artillery. Dr. Schmidt, the Government Astronomer at Athens, in his researches on the Grecian earthquakes of 1840 to 1878, arrives at the result that the great ones had almost invariably a direction from N.E. to S.W. The reviewer says that the same fact has also been noticed in regard to severe shocks in America in 1870; and he then asks "Is not this the line of path habitually followed by electric currents?" After further discussion on the physical action of earthquakes, he says "Considering the irresistible force, the unmeasured rapidity, the quick repetition, and the long duration of the shocks, what known agent in Nature, we would ask, except Electricity, is capable of producing at the same time such singular effects in the sea and such tremendous results on land?" Lyell and other authors have mentioned, but without laying on the occurrence the stress it deserves, the state of the atmosphere before an earthquake as densely charged with electricity. "The vicinity of hot springs, volcanoes, and mud lakes, regions of intense heat and centres of the electric influence, are the special haunts of the earthquake, and Science has pretty well proved that heat and electricity are convertible." All the circumstances inseparably connected with earthquakes point to the conclusion "that an earthquake is the result of discharges of terrestrial electricity accumulated in the bowels of the earth, which we know to be a reservoir of electric matter." An earthquake shock "is a direct blow not differing probably from that of a lightning stroke." "Even if it be proved that the solid strata beneath the surface and the mountain masses above it are unfavourable to the transmission of electric energy, there are plenty of cracks and fissures in its solid substances through which it may shoot forth. In the waters of ocean it finds a ready conductor, which accounts for the way in which ships on the sea are affected by it." The attention of electrical engineers is invited to consider whether it may not be possible to invent some species of apparatus " capable of averting the calamity from its habitual haunts." The reviewer hopes that men of Science intent upon the collection and storage of electric force will not neglect "that storehouse of unlimited energy already filled within the bosom of the earth," and he trusts that they may be able to devise means for preventing the fearful disasters liable to be occasioned by earthquake shocks. We have given but a brief summary of the salient points of this cogently-reasoned paper, which deals with the subject in a