The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays — John Shaqi
The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific EssaysJoly, John
Science
The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays
Joly, John
Science
The greatness of the quantities involved in these determinations
is almost awe inspiring. Take the case of the dissolved salts in
the ocean. They are but a fraction, as we have seen, of the total
results of solvent denudation and represent the integration of
the minute traces contributed by the river water. Yet the common
salt (chloride of sodium) alone, contained in the ocean, would,
if abstracted and spread over the dry land as a layer of rock
salt having a specific gravity of 2.2, cover the whole to a depth
of 107 metres or 354 feet. The total salts in solution in the
ocean similarly spread over the land would increase the depth of
the layer to 460 feet. After considering what this means we have
to remember that this amount of matter now in solution in the
seas is, in point of fact, less than a fifth part of the total
dissolved from the rocks during geological time.
The transport by denudation of detrital and dissolved matter from
the land to the ocean has had a most important influence on the
events of geological history. The existing surface features of
the earth must have been largely conditioned by the dynamical
effects arising therefrom. In dealing with the subject of
mountain genesis we will, elsewhere, see that all the great
mountain ranges have originated in the accumulation of the
detrital sediments near the shore in areas which, in consequence
of the load, gradually became depressed and developed into
synclines of many thousands of feet in depth. The most impressive
surface features of the Globe originated
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in this manner. We will see too that these events were of a
rhythmic character; the upraising of the mountains involving
intensified mechanical denudation over the elevated area and in
this way an accelerated transport of detritus to the sea; the
formation of fresh deposits; renewed synclinal sinking of the sea
floor, and, finally, the upheaval of a younger mountain range.
This extraordinary sequence of events has been determined by the
events of detrital denudation acting along with certain general
conditions which have all along involved the growth of
compressive stresses in the surface crust of the Earth.
The effects of purely solvent denudation are less easily traced,
but, very probably, they have been of not less importance. I
refer here to the transport from the land to the sea of matter in
solution.
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