Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

84 HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. [cn. vu. of the weight of the crust, which will depend upon the transfer of sediment, and is therefore caused partly by solar energy ; and pressure from beneath, which may be attributed to elastic matter confined by the superincumbent crust. No true theory of crust movements can be propounded, which does not involve all these simultaneously. But it is hardly unfair to say that in general this consideration has been overlooked, and one or other, or perhaps two together of these causes, have been invoked, and the theory has been incomplete accordingly. We henceforward assume the existence of a substratum which is either continuously and continually fluid, or at least plastic. It might be supposed that a stratum whose solidity is due to pressure, and which becomes plastic when the pressure is lessened, would satisfy the requirements of the problem. But if it be true that the overloading of an area with sediment causes it to sink, this cannot be the case; because by that means the pressure, and therefore the solidity, ought to be in- creased instead of diminished ; and the crust would not yield to the pressure. , The possibility of the existence of such a liquid substratum as is postulated, has been explained in the second chapter. We now perceive that its existence is necessary for the explanation of the phenomena of geology. We no longer regard the globe as solid from surface to centre. But we do not on that account give up what has been called the contractional hypothesis, but rather seek other causes adequate to produce the compressing stress, which we believe has been one of the forces to which the production of the inequalities of the surface is due. It will be as well at this point to refer to some ob- jections raised by Captain Dutton against this hypothesis, and if possible to reply to them. “The displacements which the strata have suffered are frequently extreme. Not only are they buckled up into great wave-like ridges; but are frequently inclined past the vertical, and are sometimes turned almost completely upside down. In New England and the Middle States the palseozoic strata are so extremely flexed and the folds so closely pressed together that they present in many econnuiclooolkks (CO)