Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 96: what you’re looking at

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

cu. vi.] HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. 79 unequal radial contraction. But we have shown in the pre- ceding chapter that 10,246 feet, or about 1°9 miles, would be the radial contraction of the whole thickness of the cooled crust on the supposition of the higher, and 3,479 feet, or about 0°65 of a mile, upon the supposition of the lower temperature that we have assumed. Now we must remember that, if the oceans be due to radial contraction, it is only the difference of radial contraction beneath them and the land that can be appealed to, to account for their relative depression. But we see by the above that the entire radial contraction is not sufficient for the purpose. This seems conclusive against this cause being capable of explaining the existing difference of level between the land-surface and the ocean-bottom. Of course it will be seen that the reasoning of the above paragraph applies only upon the hypothesis of the imequalities of the earth’s surface being due to the cooling of a solid globe, or at least of one solid to the depth to which cooling has ex- tended. There may be other causes producing radial contraction, and perhaps also expansion, of which no account has been taken. After what has been said, it seems hardly necessary to adduce any further arguments against the production of ocean basins by radial contraction from cooling. Yet it will be well to observe that there are additional difficulties in explaining by this means the oscillations of the surface up and down, which are known to have occurred in the same areas again and again. For that land and sea might interchange places by radial con- traction, the land must sink far below the bottom of the sea, so that the sea should flow into the depression thus caused, leaving its former bed forsaken and dry. This is an event which, according to our numerical results, would be quite impossible, The more one considers the instability of the earth’s crust and the magnitude according to our standards of the move- ments, the more one is lost in amazement: and it is im- possible to avoid using the kind of exaggerated language which is the opprobrium of popular geology. Rocks of a single geological period, thicker than the heights of the highest moun- tains, have been deposited over certain areas, sunk, been re- COMMICI@O© SS (CO)