Читать книгу The Evacuation of England: The Twist in the Gulf Stream онлайн

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The speaker continued, noticing with undisguised satisfaction the ocular concentration produced by his obnoxious figure, with its anomalous portents: “It is well known that we have in the boundaries, or shore lines of the Pacific, a surprisingly larger number of earthquakes recorded, than anywhere else in the world, and this seems in some way coincident with the prevalence of active volcanoes in the same region. Prof. Haughton has enumerated for the world 407 volcanoes, 225 of which are active. Of these latter, 172 are on the margin of the Pacific. Prof. Milne, who lived a long time in Japan, for the express purpose of studying the earthquake problem of those islands, has observed the surprising frequency of their earthquakes, and it is a volcanic zone they occupy. We have in contradistinction to this area about the Pacific a reversed circle which envelopes the western coast of Africa, and by this chart,” here the lecturer pushed back the blackboard, and, standing alongside of it, began, with a pointer of elucidation, a direct allocution to that subject of confusion, “we are made immediately cognizant of the opposite and yet symmetrical disposition of these zones. This should have from its simplicity and a quasi-permanency, in its phenomena—its earthquake phenomena—a general explanation. The explanation is not reassuring; it is not proven, but it is accepted by many, and has, for me, a very reasonable probability. Let us at least not recoil from its consideration.”