Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 95: what you’re looking at

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

78 HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. [con. vu. in so lucid and unprejudiced a style, that his papers are well worthy of study. The following passage conveys his conclu- sions. ‘“‘ Mountain chains and mountain ranges are therefore, I think, beyond question produced by horizontal thrust crushing together the whole rock mass, and swelling it up vertically ; the horizontal thrust being the necessary result of secular con- traction of the interior of the earth. The smaller inequalities, such as ridges, peaks, gorges, and, in fact, nearly all that con- stitutes scenery, are produced by subsequent erosion. I feel considerable confidence in the substantial truth of the foregoing statement of the formation of mountain-chains. As to the mode of formation of continents and sea-bottome, I feel less confidence. It is possible that even these may be formed by a similar un- equal yielding tv horizontal thrust, and a similar crushing © together and up-swelling. If so, it would be necessary to suppose the amount of horizontal yielding in this case much less, but the depth effected much greater than in the case of mountain- chains, But, as we find no unmistakable structural evidence of such crushing, except in the case of mountain-chains, I have preferred to attribute the formation of continents and sea- bottoms to unequal radial contraction’.” The last sentence of this passage appears to invite the remark that we cannot expect in general to have evidence of crushing except in those areas which are open to investigation, viz. on dry land. But there it is not confined to mountain- chains. Contorted strata are to be also found in what would be termed level countries, often covered with horizontal deposits of later date*: and this fact in itself proves that these contorted strata have been once covered by an ocean, offering a strong presumption that there are contorted strata now at the bottoms of the oceans. In fact it is clear that, on account of the sedimentary character of the rocks that compose continents proving that they cannot be primeval protuberances, the only hypothesis which can compete with that of lateral compression is that of 1 ss American Journal of Science,’ 3rd series, Vol. rv. p. 462, 1872. 2 For example the highly contorted carboniferous strata of parts of Belgium. commiclsoolkks