Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 105: what you’re looking at

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

88 FLUID SUBSTRATUM. (cH. vur. with crystals of chlorides, renders it probable that the steam emitted in eruptions may be a constituent part of the deep- seated rocks, for it is probable that but a small part of the water contained in any magma would become confined in the interior of the crystals’. : “Here, however, the question arises whether it would be possible for a crust to form over a layer of molten rock in a condition of igneo-aqueous fusion. Would not the escape of the water cause a state of constant ebullition which would pre- vent the formation of any crust until it had ceased through the escape of all the water ? * * * * * * * * * “We can conceive that at depths where the heat and pressure were sufficient there might be no tendency to evaporation and consequent ebullition, so that after the water had escaped to a certain depth ebullition would cease, and a crust be formed; but that more water would be ready to separate to a greater depth when its affinity for the rock became lessened through the abstraction of heat, or diminution of pressure owing to the crust being partially supported by corrugation. — “If such was the condition of the interior in the early stages of the cosmogony, a large portion of the oceans now above the crust may once have been beneath it, and thus we gain a novel conception of a sense in which the fountains of the abyss may once have been broken up’.” Upon this passage the Referee made the following anno- tation. “The Author suggests other causes of shrinking besides loss of heat, namely the escape of water. “It is probable, or rather certain, that water substance, if it exists at great depths under great pressure and at high temperature, is neither a gas nor a liquid, being above its critical point. “Tn this state substances are easily dissolved in it, not how- ever so much on account of a greater tendency to combine with water, as on account of a greater tendency of their own to 1 «Trans, Camb. Phil. Soc.”’ Vol. xu. Pt. 1, p. 5085. 2 «Trans. Camb. Phil. Soc.” Vol. xr. Pt. 2, p. 431. COMICOOOLKS @ COMA