The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-09-08

| ChriStendom.
But the earth is that it is more by the
agency of heat than by either air, water or
forces and can only act within certain limits
of temperature. Heat and cold are only
relative terms; they are synonymous with
| contraction and expansion, and as is
the degree OF this molecular motion
bodies are either gaseous, fluid
or solid, The earth has been through
these three states as its primary heat has
been Withdrawn; cooling of but few more
degrees would reduce its fluid water to
ice and destroy all life. AS the earth further
cooled all forms of water and air would be
consolidated and the earth reduced to the air
less and waterless condition of the dead moon.
Enough is known to show the earth's sur
face is in constant fux. Water and air
level and fire and organic life build up.
The history of the volcanoes, earthquakes
and gradual oscillations of the solid crust,
which are the manifestations of the earths
interior heat, is of the greatest interest. One
school of biologists has contended the heat
which fuses and elects the rocks is chemical,
and due to the oxidizing action of air and
water encroaching on the unoxidized in
terror of the earth, combining with its
metals and developing enough heat and ex
pansive force to fuse the rocks and produce
eruption. Such was Davy's hypothesis.
Others have thought the heat only that
which remains of a once incandescent earth,
now thin-crusted and liquid within. By
movements of the surface crust, due to sedi-
mentary deposits the crust is fissured. Sea
or other water enters, and the elastic force
of steam and gas, both superheated, pro-
duces the explosions and eruptions. This
apparently plausible Internationally theory
is, however, beset with many difficulties.
Following Mr.. Mallet of England, whose
researches are among the first to give scientific
form to our knowledge of earthquakes and
volcanoes, and which have been received by
dynamical biologists with the highest favor,
all igneous phenomena of the earths
interior are regarded as due to
the reaction of the earth's hot
interior upon its cooler and solid crust. The
| contractions of the earth during the long
ages of its secular cooling are greater in the
interior, and the earth's old face has been
wrinked into mountain chains and valleys.
By lateral pressure, due to the contraction
Within which removed the supports, so to
speak, of the crust, this shell has been
crushed together along the lines of least re-
sistance, so that the Alpine heights of the
continents-the mountains which are the
glory OF the earth and of absorbing interest
to poet, painter and geologist-are the up
swelled and folded strata of the earth's
cracked crust
This enormous pressure and folding and
crushing of the rocky crust to form the
mountain ranges, has changed according to
the law of conservation of forces, the gross
mechanical motion caused by gravity into the
molecular motion of heat, and that in such
| enormous amounts as to fuse the rocks, to
change lakes of water into steam, and to &C
count in brief for all the destructive phe-
nomena of the earthquake and the volcano,
as they have appeared in Italy and Sicily, in
Mexico the Sandwich Islands, and more re-
Gently in Java. That these earthquake
and volcano belts are always in
the vicinity of the sea, and occur
near well-defined mountain belts, is suggest
| i've of their purely local character. AS the
| heavy sea-beds sink, the continental axes
have been reared; these by denudation have
| formed the interior and oceanic slopes; at
the fringes of the mountains as the earth
| cools the eruptions occur
The hot springs of Arkansas and Virginia,
| the gevser basins of New Zealand and Iceland
and the Yellowstone, are doubtless due to
the same reason-the heat is that of noun
tain pressure rather than chemical, or related
directly to hypothetical and heated fluid
interior.
These phenomena are not uncommon; only
and life. The old earth is constantly shak-
ing The recorded earthquakes average two
each week, Explosive volcanoes are always
accompanied by earthquakes; volcanoes are
safety-vents for the earth-shaking force.
Stromboli, for the first time in history,
ceased erupting during the Caabrian earth
quake of 1888 while the shake which de-
stroyed Riabamba in 1877, killing 10000 per-
| sons, took place when its accompanying
| safety-valye ceased blowing off. Oc-
casionally earthquakes occur away