The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-10-01

however. declare that the latter esti- mate is too low.
 We know with the utmost exactitude how heavy our little world is. If you put down the figure 6 and follow 1t by twenty-one naughts, you have it within a very few million tens. Roughly speaking, this implies that the earth is five and a half times as heavy as globe of water of the same size.
 But, in spite Of this accurate know ledge of the eartIl's weight, we have no real idea of what is the condition of things inside our planet Thousands of experiments made in all parts of the world that the temperature rises on an average about degree for every 60 feet below the surface; If this rate of in- crease continues regularly toward the centre, that part of the globe must be at a heat so appalling that imagination is unable to grasp it. When this fact of increase of temperature with depth first became ascertained geologists got the idea that we were living upon furnance, of which volcanoes were the escape pipes. &,ss.. .5,s5 .5..,l .-,. :. : -..
 Now we know better than that. We have found, among other things that an earthquake in Japan is able to register itself in England. This actually. hap pened in the case of the disaster in north Japan four or five years ago, when 3o,000 people lost their lives A trernor of this kind could not pass un- less the earth had a rigidity approach ing that of steel, and observations of tides and the attractions exercised upon the sun and moon have made it pret- ty certain that our world is just about as hard and solid as so much steel.
 This does away with the liquid inter- for theory and makes it fairly certain that the earth is solid all through, with perhaps occasional accumulations of fluid rock here and there in parts where, for some reason or other, the pressure is not so great as it is>in others.
 It also upsets the old theory of vol- canoes. and the modern idea with re- gard to those mountains of death and destruction is that water from the sur- face Ends it's way through a few miles below the surface, and then, being suddenly turned into steam, causes an explosion, or series of explosions, like boiler burstings on a gigantic scale.
 Every schoolboy knows that the shape of the earth is an oblate spherold-that
 is to say, that it is fiattened little like an orange at the two poles. The polar diameter of the earth is actually twen- ty-seven miles less than it's diameter at the equator. But it is as yet absolutely
 ascertained whether the flattening is similar at both poles. Some Artic ex- porers appear to be of the opinion that the flattening is greater at the North than at the South Pole. ... ........xs Another rather startling fact which has recently been demonstrated is that the equator is not a perfect circle. If you could drop plumb line from Ire land through to New Zealand it would
 be somewhat longer than another which cut the earth at right angles to it. The
 difference has not yet been ascertained with absolute accuracy. .. 7 We are accustomed to talk of sea level | as an invariable quantity. It is posi- lively starting to find how very far from level the sea is. Not, of course, merely from the passing influence of tides and winds, but there are great and permanent elevations in the sea- positive mountains. in fact. 1t is cal cufated that in the Bay of Bengal the water lies at level exceeding that of 1.-the Indian Ocean by fully 300 feet, and tthat of the Pacific Ocean along the icoast of South America may be heaped up as much as 2.000 feet higher than the water in the opposite Atlantic. Those water mountains depend upon the attraction Of great mountain mass | es, the Bay of Bengal upon the Himal- ayas and the South Pacific upon the | American Andes.
 The height of our highest mountains has been measured to within an inch oi two. and we have accurate information Ion the subject depths Of the sea. But
 we ado yet know with any certainty
 how deep is the atmospheric envelope of 1.-the earth. At one time 27 miles was
 given os the limit. This was in
 creased to 40, and soon even this esti- Innate was extended to 100.
 l Our only means of measurement is by the meteors which spring into an incan. descent blase through friction wher lthey strike our atmosphere. As mar
 cannot live at a much greater height than five miles 1t may be that we shal
 never learn exactly how thick Is tht
 atmospheric ocean at the bottom ot
 which we crawl.--St. Louise Globe