Tremors in Yalta

Science is burgeoning rapidly if somewhat unsteadily in the new land of the U. S. S. R. At the town of Yalta, in the Crimea, the Soviet Government has installed a seismograph station with sensitive instruments capable of recording the slightest tremors of the earth. Recently, the savants in charge have been nonplussed by a queer epidemic of quakes. One which agitated the instruments appeared to be in Angora, another in Asia, a third on the Adriatic coast. An extremely violent series of jiggles made the seismologists believe that a quake was occurring right there in Yalta. Oddly enough, however, no other station was obtaining records of these disturbances.

Last week the explanation was out. One of the Yalta scientists found a man chopping wood in the hall of the station. Other "quakes" had been caused by people moving furniture, children playing leapfrog, adults fighting. Unknown to Yalta's unobservant seismologists these people had been moved into the seismology station by the Yalta housing committee. The committee, cabled the New York Times's Harold Denny, thought seismology a worthless science anyway since the toppling of buildings was sufficient indication that an earthquake was happening.

At Mt. Wilson Observatory in California is a seismological station so sensitive that trucks rumbling up the observatory road make tremors on the recording drums. Once a series of jiggles was traced to a child pounding a plank 400 yards away from the station. U. S. seismologists are not much disconcerted however. They have learned that it is easy to distinguish false jiggles because the record made by a real earthquake has a characteristic contour.

Real earthquakes jarred northern Europe last week, causing widespread panic, several deaths, scores of injuries. The epicentre was located by seismologists under the North Sea, 250 miles northeast of London. The shocks were felt in Belgium. England, France, Germany, The Netherlands. In Belgium, which was hardest hit, damage was estimated at more than $1,000,000. Seismological instruments in Brussels were broken by the violence of the temblor. In Ghent, one wall of the Palais de Justice was badly cracked, and a pedestrian was killed by a streetcar running wild. At Ostend, a British police band gallantly marched on, playing while the street heaved.

Next day milder "followup" shocks were felt as far south as Italy.

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