Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

76 HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. {cu. vir. land and oceans might exist, even although the radial distances of the land-surfaces and of the sea-bottoms from the centre of figure might be perfectly equal. That the distribution of the oceans is to some extent actually due to such a cause appears certain; for otherwise a whole hemisphere could not be almost entirely covered with water. On this point Archdeacon Pratt remarked, ‘“ There is no doubt that the solid parts of the earth's crust beneath the Pacific Ocean, must be denser than in the corresponding parts on the opposite side, otherwise the ocean would flow away to the other parts of the earth.” And after explaining the reason for this statement he adds, ‘“‘‘There must therefore be some excess of matter in the solid parts of the earth between the Pacific Ocean and the earth’s centre, which retains the water in its place. This effect may be produced in an infinite variety of ways; and therefore, without data, it is use- less to speculate regarding the arrangement of matter which actually exists in the solid parts below’. And Herschel con- sidered that the prevalence of land and water in two opposite hemispheres “proves the force by which the continents are sustained to be one of tumefaction, inasmuch as it indicates a situation of the centre of gravity of the total mass of the earth somewhat eccentric relatively to that of the general figure of the external surface—the eccentricity lying in the direction of our antipodes: and is therefore a proof of the comparative lightness of the materials of the terrestrial hemis- phere’.” A like conclusion as to the greater comparative density of the bed of the ocean, was arrived at by Archdeacon Pratt from the fact that at seven Coast Stations out of thirteen, six being in the Anglo-gallic, and one in the Russian arc, it has been found that a deflection of the plumb-line exists towards the sea’. “In fact,” he remarks, “the density of the crust beneath the mountains must be less than that below the plains, and still less than that below the ocean-bed. If solidification from a fluid 1 “Figure of the Earth,” 4th ed., p. 236, 1871. A great ice-cap would also have its effect. See Croll’s ‘‘ Climate and Time,’”’ Chaps. xxm1. xxrv. 2 « Physical Geography,” § 13, 1862. 5 “ Figure of the Earth,” pp. 200 and 206, 4th ed. 1871, bs. - _ae— ee ee" COMIC OOOKS.EO