EFFECT OF A POWERFUL EARTHQUAKE ON MASSIVE MASONRY, ITALY.
From traditions concerning Mohammed we learn that the circular earth lies in the midst of a vast sea, and is encircled by an immense whale, upon whose back 700,000 gigantic bulls walk up and down. Said whale swims about the earth very cautiously, but occasionally jostles it slightly. On the night when Mohammed was born this noble animal was so agitated with joy, that had not the Lord restrained him, he would assuredly have overturned the earth.
The Sandwich Islanders believed that the goddess Pele, who dwelt in the great volcano of Kilauea, was displeased with the conduct of man; she proceeded to admonish him of her power, by shaking him out of bed in the night, or tumbling his house about his ears. If especially angry, she set her volcanic home to fuming and firing.
So-called scientific theories on various topics have in time past been little more respectable, and need not be given any detailed attention. The pious gentry who deemed Roger Bacon a wizard and Columbus and Galileo heretics, would have listened with horror to any effort to explain the phenomena of earthquakes as anything else than a direct manifestation of the wrath of God. Researches in any branch of natural science met with decided discouragement in Christendom during the dark and middle ages; and the goddess of wisdom found a decidedly more congenial atmosphere at Moorish and Saracen courts.
Hence the modern science of seismology, as the investigations of earthquakes are called, is comparatively in its infancy. Yet the subject of seismic phenomena has been of interest to the thoughtful from a very early period, earthquakes being of far greater frequency than most persons suppose. Some of the earliest philosophers ventured opinions on the topic; for the records of earthquakes, more distinctly than those of volcanoes, go back to the earliest times.
We find Aristotle, in his treatise on natural events, rejecting the explanations of three other philosophers as untenable, and propounding a theory of his own. Anaximenes, of Miletus, suggested the drying and moistening of the earth occasioned irregular contraction and expansion, and from the cracking and readjusting shocks resulted. Democritus, of Abdera, shook his earth by means of vast subterranean bodies of water which some force compelled to move from one cavity to another. Doubtless the peculiar wave-like motion of the earth in many earthquakes suggested his theory. Anaxagoras, of Clazomenae, believed that ether—by which the old Greeks seem to mean air—was confined in underground cavities, and in its efforts to escape upward produced the vibration of the earth. Aristotle substitutes for the disturbing agent wind, which has flowed into fissures and caverns and is endeavoring to flow out again. Virgil and Pliny stand by the old Greek; and it is quite probable that Shakespeare acquired his idea from one of the three. And these, with Anaxagoras, are but little out of the way; for as seen in the discussion of volcanic action, the explosive or disturbing agent is generally steam, though other gases are present in large quantities.