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In-Depth Information
them. . . . over all western Europe earthquakes are incessantly at work, the
average in the zone being thirty-three shocks a year, or one in every eleven
days” (a statistic he likely drew from the seismic cataloger Alexis Perrey).
Lowe himself had conducted “experiments” that showed that faint sounds
were more audible in the dark, and weak movements of the ground more
sensible when lying down.
35
Among the Englishmen eager to share their seismic observations in
1863 was Charles Dickens. Dickens had evidently conducted a fair share
of research, for he was able to cite a report in the
Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society
from 1683 on the behavior of a barometer during an
earthquake. He cast his own observations with appropriate precision: “I was
awakened by a violent swaying of my bedstead from side to side, accom-
panied by a singular heaving motion. It was exactly as if some great beast
had been crouching asleep under the bedstead and were now shaking itself
and trying to rise. the time by my watch was twenty minutes past three, and
I suppose the shock to have lasted nearly a minute. the bedstead, a large
iron one, standing nearly north and south, appeared to me to be the only
piece of furniture in the room that was heavily shaken. Neither the doors
nor the windows rattled, though they rattle enough in windy weather, this
house standing alone, on high ground, in the neighbourhood of two great
rivers. there was no noise. the air was very still, and much warmer than it
had been in the earlier part of the night. Although the previous afternoon
had been wet, the glass had not fallen.”
36
Dickens's interest in earthquakes
may seem surprising. His long ruminations on earthquake statistics in
All
the Year Round,
in particular, seem out of keeping with his famous cynicism
about statistical knowledge in
Hard Times.
what intrigued him about seis-
mology was the suggestion of hidden connections between earthquakes and
all sorts of other phenomena—electrical, galvanic, atmospheric, and astro-
nomical. He was also drawn by the absence, as yet, of a satisfying scientific
explanation. Dickens arrayed earthquakes alongside a host of newly dis-
covered effects—geomagnetism, electromagnetism, photochemistry—that
Victorian physicists hoped to unite in a single theory: “But even Newton's
marvelous generalisations do but serve as the basis of still higher generalisa-
tions, arising from the rapid increase since his time in the number of facts
accurately observed. Newton's so-called laws, once looked on as universal,
are now becoming recognised as only subordinate to some other laws yet
to be made out. All the recent facts about earth-magnetism are new; all
the workings out of electricity in every department, are new; all we hear
about certain rays of the sun not communicating light or heat, but having
