Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 238: what you’re looking at

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

cH. xvi} EXPLAINED. 221 Both these would have sunk nearly as fast as they accumulated, and by this means unmetamorphosed strata would have been depressed into regions where their temperature would have been gradually raised, and metamorphism set in. This would render them more dense. They must necessarily contract in con- sequence, and those results: follow to which in the preceding chapter we have attributed compression. This compression might act directly upon the mass itself, or it might be com- municated to a neighbouring tract; but on the whole it seems probable that the mass itself would be the first affected, and this agrees with the theory that compression and elevation are the consequences of the accumulation of thick deposits. The difference between the theory now offered and that pro- posed by American geologists consists in the cause from which the compressing force originates. The suggestions now put forward appear to | give a fairly satisfactory explanation of the causes of the deposition of series of marine strata of great thickness, of unconformity, of meta- morphism, of contortion and elevation. LThe phenomenon which seems omitted from the explanation is that of the depression of fresh-water strata beneath the ocean, as for instance of the coal measures of various ages. This however might arise from such deposits being depressed below the level of the sea, though not under the sea, through being loaded with fresh-water sedi- ment, as is known from borings to be going on at present in great deltas and river valleys; and then, the process being checked, the sea might cut away the upper part of the sub- aerial deposit, and a marine stratum might take its place. It is possible that the fresh-water deposits becoming scanty, and. the district arid, faulting might be induced through contraction of the beds before the sea had time to advance, and thus we should find the fresh-water beds much broken up before the marine were laid down over theni. The exciting cause of the movements of the crust, as we have attempted to explain them, is the transference of sedi- ment. Wherever that goes on, movements of the crust may be expected to take place. And although not altogether con- GONG oOo SS (CO)