The causes of the earthquake cannot easily be sot forth
in a short space, but we may note that Professor Milne, the well- known English authority, whose observation station at Shide, in the Isle of Wight, is equipped with the latest and most accurate apparatus for observing and recording the tremors of the earth, gives in Friday's Daily Mail an admirably lucid account of the way in which earthquakes come about. He tells us that the earthquake trouble of Italy is caused by the fact that, though so old in civilisation, she is geologically one of the youngest of European countries. In her the upward growth of the land has not yet ceased, but is still going on; but if there is an upward movement, there must also be a
downward. As he puts it, when compression makes one ridge of the concertina bellows go up, it also makes another ridge go down. "All this means that strain is being produced, and when limits are reached, fractures take place, followed by sudden dislocations," In this case the lines of dislocation were submarine, and apparently volcanic. Etna was not responsible for the catastrophe. Although earthquakes and volcanoes live side by side and are the children of the same parents, their actions are not necessarily connected.
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