APRIL 8.] THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE. 985

George Ward, Minister of Lands, do hereby authorise the laying-off of Lupton Street, in the Township of Waverley Extension No. 1, Wellington Land District, of a width of not less than 66 ft., instead of 99 ft.

J. G. WARD,
Minister of Lands.

Plants declared to be Noxious Weeds in the Eltham and Southland Counties.—Notice No. 1290.

Department of Agriculture,
Wellington, 5th April, 1909.

IT is hereby notified for public information that the under-mentioned local authorities have, by special order, declared the plants enumerated opposite each to be noxious weeds within the meaning of “The Noxious Weeds Act, 1908,” in the district under the jurisdiction of each respectively:—

Local Authorities. Plants.
Eltham County Council .. .. Winged thistle.
Southland County Council .. .. Gorse.

J. G. WARD,
Minister of Agriculture.

Forbidding Money-order and Postal Correspondence for J. W. Kidd Company, Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.

THE Postmaster-General of the Dominion of New Zealand having reasonable ground for supposing that the company whose name and address are shown in the Schedule hereunder is engaged in advertising the treatment of diseases of the sexual organs, it is hereby ordered, under section 28 of “The Post and Telegraph Act, 1908,” that no money-order in favour of the said company shall be issued, and that no postal packet addressed to the said company (either by its own or any fictitious or assumed name), or to such address without a name, shall be either registered, forwarded, or delivered by the Post Office of New Zealand.

SCHEDULE.

J. W. KIDD Company, Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.

Dated this 5th day of April, 1909.

J. G. WARD,
Postmaster-General.

Notice to Mariners No. 21 of 1909.

Marine Department,
Wellington, 16th March, 1909.

THE following information has been received from the U.S. Hydrographic Office, and the lesson to be learnt from it in an ocean-bound volcanic country like New Zealand might be valuable not only to mariners, but possibly to landsmen also living near to the coast. It is therefore published as a Notice to Mariners.

J. A. MILLAR.

EARTHQUAKE SEAMANSHIP.

On Monday morning, 28th December, between 5 and 6 o’clock, all Italy was shaken by severe earthquakes. The seismic disturbance was most violent in Calabria and Sicily, and the great loss of life and destruction of property which occurred were accompanied by marine disasters caused by seismic sea-waves. According to the descriptions that have been given, after the earthquake the sea at first receded for some distance from the shores of Calabria and Eastern Sicily, and then a great wave 32 ft. high advanced upon the shore with appalling power and destructiveness. This is the usual march of events in connection with far the greatest number and most dangerous kind of seismic sea-waves, and hence it is important that the attention of mariners should be drawn to such characteristics of the phenomena as will lead to the taking of adequate precautions against their effects.

Great multitudes of people live in cities by the sea and are subjected to the dangers arising from seismic sea-waves, and yet, if a place of refuge exists, they usually have ample time to escape; and even the ships in the harbour will generally be safe if they promptly put to sea on the first sign, after the earthquake, of the withdrawal of the water, which always indicates that the sea-bottom has sunk. Thus by the study of the laws of the physical world and the diffusion of the resulting useful knowledge a great measure of safety may be secured from some of the most dreadful forces in nature, and in the course of time the interests of civilisation may be enormously conserved,

Aristotle correctly associated seismic sea-waves with earthquakes; and even Homer assigned these great disturbances of the sea to Poseidon’s trident, which was also the means employed for raising up islands from the bottom. The withdrawal of the water from the shore after an earthquake and its return as a great wave was familiar to Aristotle, and is implied in his description of the pathetic calamity of the destruction of Helike in 373 B.C., which was due to the subsidence of a portion of the sea-bottom in the Gulf of Corinth.

There are two general classes of seismic sea-waves. The first is due to the sinking of the sea-bottom, and is characterized by a withdrawal of the water after the earthquake, to be followed later by the return of a great wave; and the second is due to the uplift of the bottom, and is characterized by the sudden rise of the sea without any previous withdrawal from the shore. Most of the historical inundations of the sea have been due to waves of the first class. The phenomena usually noted are: First, an earthquake; second, after a short interval, the sea is noticed to be draining away, laying bare the bottom where it is ordinarily deep enough for ships to anchor; third, after an interval of an hour or so, the sea is seen to be returning as a mighty wave, washing everything before it, and thus carrying ships shoreward and stranding them; fourth, having once swept the shore, the sea again withdraws and lays bare the harbour as before, and after about the same interval again returns as a second great wave. This periodic movement of the sea may be kept up for quite a while, and sometimes quiet is not restored for a day or two. Among the well-known historical sea-waves of the first class which might be mentioned we shall cite only a few typical cases—as that which overwhelmed Helike in 373 B.C.; the waves of Callao in 1724 and 1746; the wave following the Lisbon earthquake in 1755; the waves of Arica in 1868, and Iquique in 1877; the wave on the Japanese coast in 1896. In all these cases the water first withdrew from the shore—not suddenly, but slowly, as in the draining-away of a tide, though somewhat more rapidly. This, of course, indicated that the sea-bottom had sunk, and the water was draining away to fill up the depression in the level caused by the falling of the bottom. When the currents meet at the centre an elevation is produced by their mutual impact, and when this collapses under gravity the first great wave comes ashore. The elevation then subsides into a depression as at first, and the currents again flow in and force up the level a second time; and, with the second collapse, another wave is sent ashore; and so the oscillation of the sea continues, sometimes for a day or two, before it finally quiets down.

Seismic sea-waves of the second class are produced by the uplift of the sea-bottom into ridges or submarine plateaus and islands. In such cases the water rises suddenly without previously withdrawing from the shore.

The most disastrous in its effects of any of the examples of the first class is that which occurred in connection with the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. The seismic disturbance to which this wave was due occurred under the sea off the coast of Portugal in latitude 30° north and longitude 11° west. The water drained out from the land to such an extent that the bed of the River Tagus was left dry, and, half an hour after the most severe shocks were over, a series of waves 30 ft. to 60 ft. in height broke on the shore, and, sweeping over the land, caused the death of 100,000 persons and enormous destruction of property. These waves extended along the coast, engulfing the villages for several miles to the south and reaching as far as Morocco. The shock was felt at Oporto, Cadiz, Madrid, and Funchal, and waves were propagated throughout the Atlantic to the coasts of America. At Cadiz the wave rose to 60 ft., at Madeira to 12 ft., and the sea was so disturbed 120 miles west of St. Vincent that vessels were violently shaken and men standing on deck were thrown down.

The great earthquake of Lima, on 28th October, 1724, was marked by a withdrawal of the water from the coast, followed by a wave which is reported to have been 80 ft. high, and which swept over Callao. Twenty-three ships in the harbour were sunk, and four were carried far inland; and a similar course of events occurred after the earthquake of 1746.

On the coast of Chile in 1835, after the earthquake shock, the sea retired, and then returned in a series of three waves 20 ft. high, the reflex action of which swept everything towards the sea.

After an earthquake on the coast of Peru and Chile in 1868, due to a submarine disturbance, large waves were generated which inundated the country for several miles inland, destroying several towns, and causing the death of 25,000 people. At Arica the U.S. [Name illegible] was carried to a position a quarter of a mile inland, from which she was removed still further inland by a wave of inundation attending the great earthquake at Iquique in 1877. In connection with this latter disturbance, the water was withdrawn from the shore to the extent of about 70 yards, and the waves which afterwards devastated the coast are stated to have