Penny Blood: Serial Sensation and Working-Class Entertainment — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

82 HYPOTHESIS OF SOLIDITY FAILS. [cu. vit. Reference has already been made to the opinion that the continents have occupied nearly their present positions from the earliest times. It is doubtful whether there are sufficient grounds to render this doctrine quite certain. In spite of the advance which has been made within the last few years in our knowledge of the nature of the ocean floor by dredging and sounding, we must probably always lack experimental know- ledge as to whether it covers submerged land or not. Dr Gwyn Jeffreys has described some facts regarding the occurrence of . marine shells of existing species at different heights above the present level of the sea, showing how recently much of the present land has been raised. And he has asked, “Can we rightly assign to the present oceans that geologically remote antiquity which is claimed for them*?” _Enough*has been said to show that difference of radial con- traction from mere cooling is utterly inadequate to account for the existing mequalities of the surface, and still more so for the oscillations which: have affected those surfaces during all geo- logical periods. The theory of Babbage* that the heat, con- ducted upwards into the thick deposits laid down at the bottom of the ocean, expands and elevates their surface, is possibly a vera causa, but quite incapable by itself of explaining great changes of level. Moreover the heat conducted into the new deposits must be abstracted from the couches beneath, so that there can be no absolute increase in the amount of heat beneath the area in question except such as is supplied to it laterally, so that the process must be excessively slow. We have previously been. reasoning upon the hypothesis that a solid globe, in the process of cooling, might, owing to the compression of the crust, protrude a certain quantity of the matter of the crust above what would have been its surface had the crust been perfectly compressible—t.e. above our “datum level.” But are we justified in supposing that that matter 1 «Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.’”’ Vol. xxxvr. p. 351. See also a paper by Mr T. Mellard Reade, ‘‘ Geol. Mag.” Decade mm. Vol. vi. p. 385. 2 On the Temple of Serapis, ‘Geol. Journal,” Vol. m1. p. 186; a paper containing the germ of much true reasoning about the physics of the earth’s crust. COLA @ NOOKS ACO