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GIFU, JAPAN, AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1891.
This and the pictures following on pages 19, 20, 21 are from Japanese photographs reproduced in "The Great Earthquake in Japan, 1891," by John Milne and W. K. Burton.
"Your cables are mistaken."
And, sure enough, later despatches came with information that the destructive earthquake had occurred on the 15th, within half a minute of the time Professor Milne had specified. There had been some error of transmission in the earlier despatches.
Again, a few months later, the newspapers published cablegrams to the effect that there had been a severe earthquake at Kobe, with great injury to life and property.
"That is not true," said Professor Milne. "There may have been a slight earthquake at Kobe, but nothing that need cause alarm."
And the mail reports a few weeks later confirmed his reassuring statement, and showed that the previous sensational despatches had been grossly exaggerated.
Professor Milne is also the man to whose words cable companies lend anxious ear; for what he says often means thousands of pounds to them. Early in January, 1898, it was officially reported that two West Indian cables had broken on December 31, 1897.
"That is very unlikely," said Professor Milne; "but I have a seismogram showing that these cables may have broken at 11.30 a.m. on December 29, 1897." And then he located the break at so many miles off the coast of Haiti.
This sort of thing, which is constantly happening, would look very much like magic if Professor Milne had kept his secrets to himself; but he has given them freely to all the world, and for a year or more has been making every effort, with the encouragement of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, to have earthquake observatories established at various points on the earth's surface, with instruments similar to his own, so that by comparison of records, fuller knowledge may be had of movements in the earth's crust and changes in the ocean's bed.
And various governments, universities, and learned societies, quick to see the importance of such knowledge, have sent favorable replies, so that now Harvard University, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, has its own earthquake observatory; Yerkes Observatory at Williams' Bay, Wisconsin, is expected to have one shortly; New Zealand is putting up
