Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
remains that there is not in Comrie one earthquake for ten that there used
to be. In that scene the seismic forces have shaken themselves down into
perfect accord.”
56
In this way, the press poked fun at its own fondness for
natural disasters. Such exposés undermined any credibility that observers in
Comrie might still have been able to muster. In 1894 the same paper noted
that a report of an earthquake at Comrie arrived “as usual, at the height of
the season, just in time to attract the tourist who is fond of a little adven-
ture without unnecessary danger. on one occasion some ill-conditioned
person ventured to deny the annual summer earthquake in the interest,
as he thought, of the prudent villagers, but what was his surprise when he
found that a torrent of local contradiction was the result, backed up by a
large display of cracked soup plates. It is dangerous, therefore, to interfere
with the Comrie earthquakes. If not, strictly speaking, a source of danger in
themselves, their denial is a source of danger to the scoffer.”
57
An 1898 report on a slight tremor at Comrie bore the subtitle “the Repu-
tation of the Village at Stake.” In the absence of earthquakes, the paper
noted, “Comrie has been drifting in to the position of a mere common-
place summer resort.” the recent disturbance had thus come “as a veritable
godsend.”
58
But what exactly had been observed? In the absence of instru-
mental evidence, the claims of the villagers no longer stood the test: “Sad to
relate, despite the emphatic declarations of the villagers, there are sceptics
who doubt whether there really has been an earthquake. A number of per-
sons—visitors to Comrie—declare that at the time when the earthquake is
said to have taken place nothing unusual occurred. there is a seismometer
at Comrie, but owing to the earthquakes having failed to put in an appear-
ance for several years, it has been neglected, and is not in a it state either to
support or contradict the statements as to the alleged 'disturbances;' so that,
unfortunately, there is nothing beyond the bare assertion of the earthquake
experts of Comrie with which to confound the sceptics, and the latter refuse
to accept these assertions. Nay, more, some of them are unkind enough to
recall the fact that the reputation of Comrie for earthquakes rests almost
entirely on the assertions of its inhabitants. the seismometer house was
erected over thirty years ago by the BAAS, but for years nobody has taken
any interest in it. 'Cos why? 'It never recorded anything.' Scottish intense
practicability again, you see.”
59
Against the new authority of the seismom-
eter, Comrie's inhabitants found it ever harder to establish themselves as
“earthquake experts.” It thus became a matter of course to attribute Com-
rie's former earthquakes to a certain “ingenious reporter who made the
reputation of Comrie as a seismic centre.”
60
the last strike at the credibility of Comrie's seismic observers came in
