Abstract
Is it not possible that the “Berisàl Guns” and “mist pouffers,” referred to by Prof. Darwin (p. 650), are merely earthquake sounds, the attendant shock being too slight to be otherwise perceptible? Nearly all earthquakes are accompanied by a rumbling sound, due, I believe, to the small and rapid vibrations proceeding chiefly from the margins of the area over which the fault-slip producing the earthquake takes place (Geol. Mag., vol. ix., 1892, pp. 208–218). In some districts (Comrie in Perthshire, East Haddan, in Connecticut, Pignerol in Piedmont, Meleda in the Adriatic, &c.), sounds without shocks are common during intervals which may last for several years, but slight shocks with sound occasionally intervene, as if the sounds and shocks were manifestations, differing only in degree and the method in which we perceive them, of one and the same phenomenon. In great earthquakes, the sound-area is confined to the neighbourhood of the epicentre; in moderate and slight shocks the sound-area and disturbed area approximately coincide, or the sound-area may even overlap the disturbed area. In the limiting case, the disturbed area vanishes, and the vibrations are perceptible only as sound.
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DAVISON, C. Curious Aerial or Subterranean Sounds. Nature 53, 4 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/053004d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053004d0
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