Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

80 HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. {cu. vt. elevated, crumpled, and denuded, and still stand as lofty moun- tains. In North Wales, Cambrian rocks were measured by Mr Aveline of the thickness of 23,000 feet*. The deposits of the Appalachian chain, we are told, attain a thickness of eight miles*. In such cases as these, not only must the rocks now exposed at the localities, where the lower beds of the series are at the surface, have been at one time as far below the sea; but the areas now occupied by sea must have presented land surfaces, m the latter instance believed to have been to the north-east, in order to furnish the detritus out of which these great piles of strata were formed. Again the islands of New Zealand oceupy a central position in the aqueous hemi- sphere; and yet they contain a series of deposits chronologically analogous to those of the northern hemisphere*; whence it follows that they must have been often submerged during periods, when there existed, in what is now an extended ocean, land surfaces, from which the materials of their rocks must have been derived. The Himalayan area presents some peculiarly interesting features in this connection. The sub-Himalayan range consists of tertiary strata which are now highly disturbed. All, with the exception of the lower portion, which 1s nummulitic and conse- quently marine, are composed of sub-aerial deposits, formed by detritus brought down by torrents from the Himalayas. These deposits are together between 12,000 and 15,000 feet thick. The sandstones, which form the chief portion of these beds, and the red clays which are intercalated with them, are exactly like the alluvial deposits of the plains. ‘“ Thus it was suggestive, and not altogether misleading, to say that the Siwaliks were formed of an upraised portion of the plains of India*.” The surface movements indicated by this history suggest a level area at the foot of the Himalayan range, sinking continuously during the former part of the tertiary period. Then a great movement of 1 Jukes’ “Student’s Manual of Geology,” 3rd ed., p. 526, 1872. 2 Hall’s * Natural History of New York,” Part v1. Palwontology, Vol. 111. p. 67. 3 Capt. F. W. Hutton, ‘“ Geol. Mag.,’? Decade m. Vol. 1. p. 27, note. See also Hochstetter’s ‘‘ Geology of New Zealand,” Auckland, 1864. 4 ‘Manual of the Geology of India,’’ Medlicott and Blandford, p. 525. commiclsoolkks CO)