CAUSES OF EARTHQUAKES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Jul 4, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 26.

CAUSES OF EARTHQUAKES.

THE following have been among the alleged causes of earthquakes: Professor Howe, Denver University, the earth's cooling; shrinkage of the interior causes cracking of the exterior.

Professor Milne, of London, upheaval in the interior of the earth.

Professor Goode, of the Chicago University, due to the Rocky Mountains, which are gradually rising.

Professor Wright, of Yale, believes it is owing to earthquakes in Japan and Formosa.

Board of Trade Building after the Fire in San Francisco. How quickly may the riches of this world pass away! What a lesson the calamities of the world ought to teach us of laying up treasure in heaven!

Prof. John C. Branner, of Stanford University, gives three causes of earthquakes: Explosions, slipping of rocks one against another, and fractures in the earth's crust, the very heavy pressure brought to bear upon the mass of rock to cause it to break. The slipping of rocks is the cause, he thinks, of the California earthquake. As to the cause of the slipping, he gives three theories: expansion of rock, contracting of rock by cooling, and the shifting of the load upon the top of the earth.

Prof. J. C. Hartzel, Geological Department of University of the Pacific, declares that it is owing to the more rapid cooling of the surface of the earth. The contracting of the cooler part pushes inward, causing distortion of the strata of the earth's surface. This earthquake, he thinks, was simply the slipping of the surface strata in this vicinity.

Charles Buckner, of Oakland, contends that the center of the earth is a mass of solid rock covered with an elastic bark, and in this bark the earthquakes originate; pent-up gases force openings; coal oil and gas in the cavities of the earth combine with other material, or the falling of a rock in the porous section produces sparks, and that produces gas.

There are all these and still other theories, of which one can take his choice. Suffice to say, every one knows there was an earthquake.