A New England scientist says there’s going to be dickens to pay if the rest of the United States continues to cart away granite and marble from the land of the Pilgrims and Puritans. “It is not unlikely,” says he, “that the equilibrium of the earth is already considerably disturbed, and that we shall shortly feel a pronounced wobble. Of course, if there is to be a wobble anywhere we would prefer it in New England, but perhaps the outlook is not so desperate as at first glimpse. The summer rush of people to the White mountains, Bar Harbor, Newport, and a thousand other New England summer resorts must in a very great degree restore the weight which existed before there were quarries in New England. And there is another thing. It is computed that there were in the Western hemisphere, when Columbus set foot on it, not more than 1,000,000 human beings. There are now, at a very low estimate, 101,000,000. These 100,000,000 of additional persons have increased the weight of the western hemisphere some 5,000,000 of tons, in the roundest of round numbers. Surely there is an opportunity for a wobble in this state of affairs, and we ought to be conscious of it by this time. If there has been no wobble an explanation should be demanded. Some men of science should rise to tell us why we don’t wobble.” Nothing is more dreadful, says the Buffalo Courier, than the uncertainty when and where the commotion will begin. Probably only those who are holding to the car straps at the time will keep their feet.
One of the interesting things about this entry is not the goofy calculation — it’s the link to an online catalog of the works of Frederick Ferdinand Schafer (who apparently painted many dramatic American landscapes) that was put together by an emeritus computer engineering professor at MIT. (See the White mountains link.) The site is a bit out of date (last updated in 2004), but it’s goal was to teach the professor about how an online library might work.