The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, March 1885Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Science
The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, March 1885
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
Treats of the forces that move things on or beneath the earth’s surface.
The Drift shows not a little confusion. Things are evidently in an
abnormal condition, and strangely mixed. Some of the disturbing causes
are obvious. Currents of the atmosphere and ocean have done much, but are
not sufficient to account for all the phenomena. Boulders brought from
ledges north of the great western lakes, are found scattered over all the
western states, some much battered on the passage, others bearing only
marks of long exposure to the elements. Deep furrows have been plowed
in the rocks and hill tops over which they passed, at an elevation of
thousands of feet above the level of the sea. Currents of water could
never have lifted such huge masses from the lower to higher levels, or
transported them any such distances. Icebergs or glaciers have evidently
moved over the whole Drift region with fragments of rocks and pebbles
frozen into their lower surface, that, like huge rasps, both cut away and
polished the hardest rocks, at the same time bearing forward the boulders
and whatever else chanced to be held in their cold embrace. There are
other footprints of many and very great changes that have been wrought.
Though many persons have erroneous impressions of the inequalities on the
earth’s surface, the height of the loftiest mountains being but little
when compared with the earth’s diameter, yet there is evidence that the
normal condition has not been preserved. Large districts have, even
within the historic period, been lifted far above their former level,
and others sunk as much below. New islands have appeared in the midst
of the sea, while others have sunk out of sight. Multitudes now live on
what was once the bed of the sea, “in which were things innumerable,
great and small beasts;” and ships sail over territory once covered with
the habitations of living men. Rocks of immense thickness have been
broken and the parts lifted into a vertical position, and many such great
changes have taken place. What wrought them? It is safe to say that
at least two forces have been operating, the one more gradual than the
other. The cooling of the internal mass must cause contraction, which, in
a globe of such dimensions, would be sufficient to break the strongest
rocks constituting its shell. This force, when properly directed, might
lift the rocks, and even throw them back on other strata of more recent
formation. Then the expansive force of the gases within, when raised to
their highest tension, is enough to cause earthquakes, and pour through
the partially opened craters, or where the barriers are made less secure,
floods of lava that are in time changed into rocks of that peculiar
class. The vent will be found where the crust above the struggling giant
is weakest, whether that be on the mountain top where the rocks had been
shoved up into a vertical position, or at the bottom of the sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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