Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 279: what you’re looking at

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

262 DISTRIBUTION OF VOLCANOS. [cH. xxI. if as believed the suboceanic crust is not much less dense than the substratum, even if there were compression, the resulting elevation would be comparatively small, because much more of the compressed matter would go to form the roots, than would be the case.with a lighter crust. There is a distinction to be observed between an erupted cone and a mountain produced by compression. The process of formation of the latter causes a downward protuberance, which assists by floatation to support the weight. But no such pro- tuberance accompanies the piling up of a volcanic cone. Con- sequently, where that is formed distant from any mountain chain, the tendency to rupture, and sink through the crust, will be uncompensated. In the oceanic areas the downward pressure of the cone will of course be lessened by the weight of the water disp!aced by it; but on the other hand the difference of specific gravity of the crust and the substratum being, as we believe, less than in continental areas’, the support furnished from below will be less. The result will be that an oceanic volcanic area will have a tendency to perpetuate its own exist- ence by fissuring the crust around its margin, and along the fissures so formed fresh eruptions might be expected to break forth. The elliptical form of many coralline archipelagos may perhaps lend countenance to such a supposition, for a train of volcanos, established originally upon a single line of fissure, would develop a figure of that form during the process we have suggested. Reverting to the trains of volcanos which range parallel to the coasts of the great continents, we observe that, along the boundary of the Pacific Ocean, where near the American shore deep water is found not far from land, there the volcanos stand on the edge of the continent. But where, as in the Aleutian Islands, Japan, and the more southern parts of the western area of the Pacific, no great coast-range of mountains exists, and deep water is not found near the continent, there is found a great fall in the bed of the ocean on the outer, or Eastern, side of the Islands which carry the volcanos. Here then, if the 1 p. 165. COMICOOOLKS @ (CO)