In the northern states all these types, and many others also of
the vast number of varieties of intrusive rocks, can be found
among the rocks of the drift brought from the areas of igneous
rock in Canada and the states of our northern border.
SUMMARY. The records of geology prove that since the earliest of
their annals tremendous forces have been active in the earth. In
all the past, under pressures inconceivably great, molten rock has
been driven upward into the rocks of the crust. It has squeezed
into fissures forming dikes; it has burrowed among the strata as
intrusive sheets; it has melted the rocks away or lifted the
overlying strata, filling the chambers which it has made with
intrusive masses. During all geological ages molten rock has found
way to the surface, and volcanoes have darkened the sky with
clouds of ashes and poured streams of glowing lava down their
sides. The older strata,--the strata which have been most deeply
buried,--and especially those which have suffered most from
folding and from fracture, show the largest amount of igneous
intrusions. The molten rock which has been driven from the earth's
interior to within the crust or to the surface during geologic
time must be reckoned in millions of cubic miles.
THE INTERIOR CONDITION OF THE EARTH AND CAUSES OF VULCANISM AND
DEFORMATION
The problems of volcanoes and of deformation are so closely
connected with that of the earth's interior that we may consider
them together. Few of these problems are solved, and we may only
state some known facts and the probable conclusions which may be
drawn as inferences from them.
THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH IS HOT. Volcanoes prove that in many
parts of the earth there exist within reach of the surface regions
of such intense heat that the rock is in a molten condition. Deep
wells and mines show everywhere an increase in temperature below
the surface shell affected by the heat of summer and the cold of
winter,--a shell in temperate latitudes sixty or seventy feet
thick. Thus in a boring more than a mile deep at Schladebach,
Germany, the earth grows warmer at the rate of 1 degrees F. for
every sixty-seven feet as we descend. Taking the average rate of
increase at one degree for every sixty feet of descent, and
assuming that this rate, observed at the moderate distances open
to observation, continues to at least thirty-five miles, the
temperature at that depth must be more than three thousand
degrees,--a temperature at which all ordinary rocks would melt at
the earth's surface. The rate of increase in temperature probably
lessens as we go downward, and it may not be appreciable below a
few hundred miles. But there is no reason to doubt that THE
INTERIOR OF THE EARTH IS INTENSELY HOT. Below a depth of one or
two score miles we may imagine the rocks everywhere glowing with
heat.
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