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Earthquakes in the light of the new seismology (1904)
Earthquakes in the light of the new seismology - 1904 Author:Clarence Edward Dutton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III QUAKES OF VOLCANIC ORIGIN The Fire Girdle of the Pacific—ltb Discontinuous Character—Exaggerated Estimates of the Interdependence of Volcanic a... more »nd Seismic Activity— Milne's Japanese Catalogue—It Shows Little of Such Association— Milne's and De Montessus's Conclusions on the Association of Seismic- ity with Topographic Relief—Many Quakes are Certainly of Volcanic Origin—Distinctive Characteristics of Volcanic Quakes—Their Shallow Centra—The Casamicciola Quake of July 28, 1883—The Mauna Loa Quake of March 27, 1868—The Quake on Mt. Ararat, June 2O, 1840— Recent Eruptions in Martinique and St. Vincent Unaccompanied by Marked Seismic Action—Volcanic Tremors—The Krakatoa Eruption— Small Relative Energy of Volcanic Quakes—Quakes from Mt. -Etna— Possibility of Quakes from Plutonic Subterranean Action Not Manifested on the Surface MUCH has been said in elementary books of Geology and Physical Geography of the great volcanic circle which, on the east of the Pacific, extends from Alaska to Cape Horn, and on the west of that ocean extends along the border of Asia and its archipelagos to the equator, and thence westward to the Bay of Bengal and southward to New Zealand. On a globe a foot or two in diameter this girdle appears as a nearly continuous belt, for the most part narrow, bristling with great mountains, wrinkled with the folds of compressed strata, and so thickly studded with vol- canos that we listen readily to the assertion that it is preeminently the great circle of dynamic action, and of volcanic as well as seismic energy. But if we examine these propositions in detail, if we project them upon a large-scale map, the less reason do we find to assign to this circle any real unity or continuity. On the contrary, it appears, with a little scrutiny, to resolve itself...« less