Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 116: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER IX. CRUST NOT FLEXIBLE. Lhe “datum level” equation has served an important purpose—Supposition of a flexible crust— Mode of determining the general character of the undulations which a thin flexible crust would assume when resting upon a liquid — Mathematical investigation of the problem—Certain negative conclusions therefrom regarding the earth's crust—Alternative assumption to which we are led. WE have thus arcived at the conception of an elastic highly heated layer of rocky matter’ combined with water substance, kept in a state of compression by the superincumbent pressure of the crust, but ready to burst forth with the evolution of steam and gas wherever and whenever a vent is opened for its escape. We are now freed from the trammels imposed by the hypo- thesis of a solid globe, contracting from the effect of cooling only. In reverting to our original relation between the hori- zontal compression and the volumes of the inequalities—-which we have called our datum level equation—viz, 8ar7r*ke = 3, (A) —& (B), we are no longer obliged to consider % (B) as non-existent : for it is now conceivable-that the solid crust may dip downwards into the fluid substratum, which in its turn may rise into the anticlinals, | It is true that under our new hypothesis this equation 1s in- determinate, because we do not know where to place the 1 This layer will be usually termed “ fluid” rather than ‘liquid,’ because the term “liquid” does not convey the idea of elasticity which, when the pres- sure is sufficiently diminished, will be an attribute of the substratum. 7—2 COLA @ NOO (CO)