Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 289: what you’re looking at

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

2/2 SUMMARY. [cm. XXII. The well-known fact, that great lateral compression has affected the stratified rocks of the earth’s crust, is now generally explained by the supposition that the globe has contracted through secular cooling. It is thought that, as the cooling proceeded, the interior shrank away from the crust, and the latter became wrinkled; and that by this means the crump- ling and contortions of the rocks were produced. We have accordingly calculated what the lateral pressure would be, which would be available for crushing the strata of the earth's surface, supposing that the interior were to shrink away from the crust, and to leave it unsupported. We find that it amounts to the enormous pressure of the weight of a column of rock of the surface density, of the same section as the stratum, and two thousand miles long, or about 830,200 tons upon the square foot. We need not doubt that this pressure would be competent to perform the work expected of it. Nor would any solid stratum in the interior of the earth be capable of sustaining the lateral pressure upon it: for these lateral pressures would be still greater within the earth than at the surface, except very near the centre. V. That the pressure thus produced would be abundantly sufficient for the purpose, is however no proof that the work has been accomplished in that way. It has been an assumption often repeated, but never proved. The first task which we have proposed to ourselves is therefore to examine this point. We admit that the inequalities of the earth’s surface have been caused by lateral compression, but we are not sure that this has arisen from the secular cooling. We therefore commence our enquiry by seeking for some measure of the inequalities of the surface, as a preliminary step towards determining how they have been produced: and in the first instance we include the greater inequalities, which constitute the oceanic and con- tinental areas. But although we have ocular proof that moun- tain chains have been formed by compression, it is mere matter of inference that the elevation of continents above the ocean floor, 1s hkewise due to the same cause. Suppose then the earth to have contracted through cooling, COMIC OOOKS.EO