Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 293: what you’re looking at

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276 SUMMARY. [cH. XxII. accompanied by a great emission of steam: but it is not agreed whether this water-substance forms an integral part of the substratum, or whether it becomes in some way subsequently mingled with the lava during, or just before, its eruption. The position of volcanos near the sea, and the sea salts given off by the lava, have been held to favour the latter supposition. Water can be conceived to gain access to masses of heated rock only in two ways; by open fissures, or by capillary ab- sorption. We have, we think, shown that neither mode of access is possible. It remains that this water, and the ele- ments of sea salts, must be original constituents of the magma. The question then is, how this water-substance comes to be there. To answer this it is necessary to go back to the cosmogony, and we suppose that, under the pressure due to the water-substance which would have, in a state of vapour or gas, formed the outer layers of the still incandescent earth, this vapour or gas would not have been necessarily superin- cumbent on an anhydrous globe, but that such rocky matters as were soluble with it would have been in solution with it. As cooling proceeded, an upper crust of rock would have been formed by crystallization at a certain level, and would have gradually extended downwards. But we conceive that there still exists an intensely hot layer of water dissolved silicates, in a state of what has been called igneo-aqueous fusion, under- lying the solid crust, ever mm readiness to furnish the steam, gases, and ejectamenta, of the volcano. This igneo-aqueous fusion has usually been spoken of as a, state of solution of the rock in water. It is a condition of which we know little. Perhaps it may be more correctly described as a state of solution of water in rock. Ard some recent experiments by Mr Hannay throw an interesting light upon the subject. He doubts the conclusions of Andrews as to the continuity of the states of matter, and it would appear from his reasoning’, that, when a substance is confined at a temperature above the critical, it 1s really in the gaseous state ; and that in this state it is capable of holding solids in solution, 1 Proc. Roy. Soc., Vol. xxx11, p. 410, June 16, 1881. See also ibid. p. 407. COLA @ NOOKS ACO