Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER VIIL FLUID SUBSTRATUM. The extravasation of water substance from beneath the crust suggested as a cause of contraction of volume—Igneo-aqueous fusion—Dissolving power of water when above the critical temperature—Scrope—LeConte—Escape of steam from volcanic vents—Opinion that sea water gains access to volcanic foct—Objections to this hypothesis— Experiment of Daubrée not in point — Views on cosmogony—Dr Sterry Hunt’s theory—Objections to it—Fails to account for the facts—A suggestion to explain the presence of water substance below the cooled crust. WE have now to seek for causes of compression by con- traction of the volume of the globe beneath the cooled crust, or otherwise; and we have arrived at the conclusion that we are at liberty, or rather are obliged, to seek them compatibly with the existence of a liquid or plastic substratum. Accordingly, when the Author's paper on “the Inequalities of the Earth's Surface viewed in connection with the secular Cooling” was read, it contained the following suggestion: “There may have been a considerably larger nucleus in- closed within the crust in early times than we have at present, and a great portion of such nucleus may have consisted in superheated water, the rocks being in a state of igneo-aqueous solution: and much of this water may have been blown off in steam during volcanic eruptions, by that means materially con- tributing to the diminution of the volume. I have suggested in my former paper read before this Society, that Mr Sorby’s observations on the water enclosed in granitic crystals, along CONNEC OOO @ (CO)