A Penny of Observation
THE EARTHQUAKE
The Times' account of last Sunday's earthquake makes grim reading. In Dover a small clock fell on to its face. The bed of a correspondent on Hampstead Heath was lifted up and down—by a movement " rhythmical in character and of such intensity that his first impulse was to clutch the mattress." Two blackbirds nesting under his window abandoned all pretence of self-control, and for half an hour went on " calling out in an agitated manner." " A group of people sitting in a room at Maida Vale described their experience as uncanny " : as well they might. The act of sitting in a group in Maida
Vale at half-past one in the morning passes from the eccentric to the eerie when the session is accompanied, as this was, by " a marked rumbling noise." But it was a great day for the seismologists. After years of patient obscurity they came into their own. " At last," said a man whose name, we are given to understand, is one to conjure with in seismological circles, " at last people will stop mistaking me for a man who collects coins." * *
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