13 JUNE 1931, Page 3

The Earthquake At half-past one on Sunday morning the whole

of Great Britain sustained' an earthquake shock of unusual force. Light sleepers were awakened in many parts of the country from Wick to Swansea, but no one was hurt and no serious damage was done. The centre of disturbance is thought to have been in the Eastern Midlands or in the North Sea. The Chapter House at Lincoln, but not the Cathedral, was somewhat shaken, and minor damages to buildings occurred in many places. The experts declare that the shock was far slighter than that of the earthquake of 1884, the last serious visitation of the kind in England, and that it was in no way comparable to the three earth- quakes of 1750, which, as Horace Walpole noted, threw London into a panic of terror and brought Whitefield his largest open-air congregation in Hyde Park. There seems no reason to suppose that our comparative immunity from such earth-movements is in any way impaired.