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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text.
Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book
(without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not
illustrated.1880 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. EARTHQUAKES--CONNECTED
WITH VOLCANOES--JORDLLA--PERU--EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE--EARTHQUAKE
WAVES--CELEBRATED EARTHQUAKES OF ANTIQUITY--SICILY AND
CALABRIA--LISBON--AMERICA--EARTHQUAKES IN BRITAIN--UPHEAVALS OF
LAND. EARTHQUAKES were defined by Pliny as subterranean storms.
Modern natural philosophers are by no means more agreed than about
eruptions, as to the precise causes of these extraordinary
disturbances, though the old theory has been given up which
regarded them as a liquid wave surging in the interior of the
earth, crumbling, cracking, and shaking the thin crust above. Still
less can we accept the Japanese idea, for instance, of great whales
creeping under the surface of the ground. The tendency is rather to
explain them as the effect of an internal rupture or explosion
that, not able to burst through the surface, expands or contracts
the surrounding rocks, and thus spreads a wide ripple of motion
among the strata on either side, with a splitting and trembling of
the ground resting on these displaced foundations. One thing seems
certain, that there is a close connection between the phenomena of
the earthquake and of the volcano: if they be not brother and
sister, they are at least first cousins. Disturbances of this kind
are most marked in volcanic areas. An eruption is frequently
preceded and attended by earthquakes in the case of some mountains;
with others, the sudden disappearance of their smoking cap is the
signal for the inhabitants around to expect a shaking of the earth;
while earthquakes sometimes result in the throwing out of flames,
smoke, steam, hot springs, and other familiar products of a crater.
An earthquake has, therefore, been looked upon as an effort to set
up a volcano, and a volcanic cone as a safety-valve for the sam...
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