Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 91: what you’re looking at

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

74 HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. [cu. vit. 7,000° F., we suppose that the rocks solidified at 4,000° F., which is about the temperature of melting slag, then the average height of the elevations would be less than 200 feet. These results do not require a knowledge of the conductivity. But if the conductivity be known, then the time elapsed since solidification took place is also known, and if we accept the value for this constant found for certain rocks in situ at Edin- burgh by Sir Wm. Thomson, viz. 400’, it appears that it would have been about 98,000,000 years ago, if the temperature of solidification was 7,000° F.; and about 33,000,000 years if it was 4,000° F.* These are the grounds, and these are the data, upon the strength of which physicists have restricted geologists to a term of years for the evolution of the present state of the earth®. If the earth be not solid their argument fails. We have also found that with the temperature 7,000° F. the cooling would have sensibly penetrated to a depth of about 160 miles, and with a temperature of 4,000° to about 100 miles. This is irrespective of the conductivity’. The condition of the sphere below the depth to which cooling has extended, that is whether it be liquid or solid, would not influence the conclusions regarding the amount of the elevations arrived at in the last chapter. Its temperature there, however, must be supposed that of solidification of the surface. 1 « Trans. Royal Soc. Edin.,” Vol. xxu., 1861; 400 is nearly the mean of the 2nd column in the table at p. 426, See also ‘‘Nat. Phil.,” p. 718. 4 See p. 71, note. $ “If we suppose the temperature of melting rock to be about 10,000° F. (an extremely high estimate) the consolidation may have taken place 200,000,000 years ago.”” Sir Wm. Thomson, ‘Trans. Royal Soc. Edin.,”’ Vol. xxm1. p. 157, 1862, and Thomson and Tait, ‘Nat. Phil.,” p. 716, ed. 1867. ‘Geology, in framing its conclusions, is compelled to take into account the teachings of other sciences. If we felt disposed to give an indefinite amount of time to the evolution of cosmos out of chaos, as has sometimes been thought possible, the student of heat, and mechanics comes in, and asserts upon the authority of his branch of science, that a limit must be put to the time available for bringing about the present condition of things: he will grant 100,000,000 to 800,000,000 of years as the extreme allowance of time; if geologists cannot be content with this allow- ance, & distinguished professor has said, ‘so much the worse for the geologists, for more they cannot have’ (Prof. Tait on ‘Some recent advances in Physical Science’),”” Bp. of Carlisle on “Origin of the World, &c.,” 8. P. 0. K. 1880. 4p. 71. COMICOOOLKS @ a a ed