The Continuation of Milne's Work in Seismology

Abstract

A WELL-INFORMED writer in The Times of August 7 has insisted on the importance of securing the continuity of the late Prof. Milne's great scheme of seismological observation and research. Milne himself always fought strenuously against his own undertaking being absorbed and lost in any international scheme. It is true that in connection with the international system there are some admirably equipped laboratories, furnished with a variety of instruments of extreme delicacy and sensitiveness; but the establishment of one of these is so costly an undertaking that such laboratories can never become numerous. Milne's aim was to secure a great number of seismological stations, scattered as widely as possible over the globe, each furnished with instruments of the same pattern, the records of which would be strictly comparable. The practical results which have been secured by Milne's scheme have shown that the comparatively simple type of apparatus which he advocated has furnished just such an observational basis for research as is necessary. Milne, at the outset, saw in the British colonies and dependencies the means for a wide extension of his scheme—though he by no means limited his efforts within the Empire. It would, indeed, be a disgrace, as well as a misfortune, to British science if the great undertaking originated by Milne were to suffer dislocation, or to be lost by absorption in any other scheme; and, at the same time, no more worthy monument to Milne's enterprise could be imagined than the maintenance and development of the system of observations to which he devoted his genius and energy, and for which he received little practical encouragement during his lifetime.