Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER VIL HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. Summary of results of Chap. VI.—Grounds on which Physicists have restricted geological time within certain limits—Discrepancy between height of the actual average elevations and of those which would be produced upon a cooling solid globe—Necessary alternative suppositions—Captain Dutton’s argument —Ocean basins—Opinions about them of Pratt, Mallet, Hopkins, LeConte— Radial contraction cannot explain them—Still less oscillations of surface— Examples of oscillation—N. Wales, Appallachians, New Zealand, India, Colorado Plateau—Gwyn Jeffreys on changes of level—Babbage—The dis- tribution of elevations in ranges requires a fluid substratum—This suppo- sition explains other surface movements—The pressures under which any part of the crust is in equilibrium—The so-called ‘‘ contractional hypothesis ”’ not to-be abandoned—Captain Dutton’s objections to it considered. THE results at which we have arrived in the preceding chapter are that, if the elevations on the earth’s surface are due to the contraction of a hot solid globe, cooling by conduction to and radiation from its outer surface, then the average height of the elevations above the datum level can be expressed within the limits of error of a few feet, by a formula which we have there obtained. And if into this formula we introduce the following suppositions (1) That the average rate of increase of temperature near the surface is 1° F. for 51 feet of descent ; _ (2) That the temperature at which the rocks solidified was 7,000° F.; we then arrive at the result, that the average height of the elevations produced from the era of solidification to the present time would be between 800 and 900 feet. But if, instead of COLA \ NOO (CO) mG)