Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

cH. vi.] HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. 75 We have previously, in the fifth chapter, estimated the average height of the elevations which actually exist upon the earth’s surface above the datum level, which we have assumed to coincide approximately with the profound depths of the ocean, and we have found it to be at the lowest estimate about 9,500 feet. This is more than ten times as great as the theo- retical estimate belonging to the temperature 7,000° F., and about fifty times as great as the estimate corresponding to the temperature 4,000° F., upon the hypothesis of a cooling solid globe. It does not seem probable that an error in the assumed values of the temperature of solidification on the one hand, nor in estimating the average height of the actually existing in- equalities on the other, can explain the discrepancy. We appear then to be compelled to accept one of the two alterna- tives, (1) Either the inequalities of the earth’s surface are not altogether, or even chiefly, due to lateral compression, or (2) there has been some other cause involved in producing the needful amount of compression of the crust, besides the contrac- tion of a solid interior through mere cooling. Captain ©. E. Dutton, of the United States army, has like- wise noticed this inability of the contraction of a solid globe through cooling to account for the geological facts’. His argu- ment is of a similar character to that of the author here re- published. . The question now for consideration is whether we are right in attributing the inequalities to lateral compression, or whether there may not be some other hypothesis which better explains the phenomena. The principal difficulties appear to be with regard to the basins of the great oceans. Were the earth a perfectly smooth © spheroid, without any inequalities on its surface, even in that case an excess of density in particular regions would determine a flow of water towards them, and it is conceivable that dry _ 1 6 American Journal of Science and Art,’’ Jan. 1874, Vol. vrit., 3rd series, p.113. This article was posterior to the author’s first publication on the subject, but entirely independent of it. A subsequent brochure by Capt. Dutton upon the same topic appeared in the ‘“‘ Penn Monthly,”’ Philadelphia, May, 1876, which was reviewed in the ‘“‘ Geol. Mag.” Decade 1. Vol. tv. p. 822. GONG oOo SS GO)