Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

140 DISTURBED TRACT. [cH. x. possibly above the ocean, there will be at the same time an addition of about nine times as much to the volume below the lower mean. Or nine-tenths of the sediment brought down will disappear from view. This explains how it is, that much of the enormous quantity of sediment brought down by a great river appears to be, as it were swallowed up in a bottomless abyss. It will be recollected, that this was one of the facts primarily adduced to show a@ priort the improbability of an entirely solid earth’. We appear to have now learnt all we are able about the character of the movements produced by the transference of the sediment. We cannot find the actual positions of the volumes y, and y,, because these will depend upon the degree of rigidity of the crust. And even if we knew what this is, the determination would probably be impracticable. However, we can see that the less readily the crust replies by bending or breaking to the altered strain upon it, the less the curvature will be altered, and therefore the further will be the centres of y, and y, from the axis of rotation of the tract. A consequence of the rotation round G’ will be to give the tract a certain degree of inclination, or “hang” towards the east, so that the resultant pressure of the fluid will have a certain amount of eastward direction; and im assuming the new position of equilibrium there will be a general shifting of the whole tract eastwards. The result (and it 1s a very important one) will be to subject the crust in the region of y, to tension, which will possibly open fissures downwards on the western side of the ridge. The smaller the distance apart of y,, y,, the greater this “hang” will be for given values of them. It is evident that the existence of Vy the uptilted volume, depends entirely upon the crust possessing a certain degree of rigidity. If there were no rigidity there would be no tilting. A certain additional rigidity will be imparted to the tract as a whole, by the existence of a considerable ridge, which, with 1 p. 81. COMIC OOOKS.EO