Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

cH. vitl.] FLUID SUBSTRATUM. 95 be compared to the surface of a lava stream. When once this surface had attained the temperature of the atmosphere, it would contract no further, and the hotter subjacent parts would cool by conduction through the exterior. It does not appear therefore that gaping cracks would be formed in it, but on the other hand corrugations, the lateral pressure rather hindering extravasation than promoting it. But this does not appear to be the condition that Dr Hunt contemplates for the formation of a water-impregnated layer. The proximate cause of mountain elevation he considers to be the depression of this supposed water-impregnated layer through the covering of it by thick deposits of detritus, in consequence of which the isogeotherms have risen, the water- impregnated layer has entered on a state of igneo-aqueous fusion, and the globe contracting by general loss of heat has caused the crust to be wrinkled along the elongated areas in this manner weakened. | It is obvious however,. that the theory thus developed, admirable in some respects, offers no special facility towards affording sufficient compression. The contraction of the matter of the globe through mere cooling is alone appealed to. All the objections therefore to the adequacy of this cause, which have been brought forward in the previous chapters, apply with equal force to Dr Hunt’s explanation. It may also be ques- tioned whether a layer of material simply deposited from water, in a manner similar to that of the ooze or sand of the ocean bed, would after consolidation into rock supply sufficient water to account for the immense quantities of steam given off during volcanic eruptions. It appears that there ought to be, under this view of its derivation, the same equivalence between the amount of the lava and of the gaseous emanations from a vent, as between the earthy sediment and the water incorporated with it when it became consolidated after precipitation. Although no exact measures are known, still it seems that the water given off in steam bears too large a proportion to the solid matter to be thus accounted for; especially when we remember that, besides the emanations from the crater, a large quantity of steam is emitted by the lava stream after eruption, before 1t becomes cool. GONG IOoO SS (CO)