Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1903-05-14
Saint Nafa $ Beacon.


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our little old globe has Jumped its
orbit, SO to speak, and is webbing
round in space, like an intoxicated
mao.
This irregularity. the professor
explains, will shortly cause our sum-
mers TO become hotter and hotter,
and our winters 10 be colder. With
in fifteen ostwenty years at theout-
side. accas1&ng t6zhis figures, the
entire hudsNf acs IN be alternately
either frizled or frozen to death.
Even this. however, would be bet
ter than being comet-stricken, after
the fashion So graphically portraved
recently by III. G. Wells. Pfacti-
cally all scientists are agreed that
what he describes is likely to hap
pen sooner later.
Prof. par goes even further.
He says that not only may such a
catastrophe occur at any time In the
more or less near future. but that il
"has certainly happened, and al
most certainly more than once, in
the more or less near past.
The converse Of this cataclysm OF
fire is a .cataclysm of ice. This we
know, for an absolute fact, TO have
occurred before: and we also know
that it is practically certain TO recur,
and that, too, speaking geologically,
at no very far distant date.
The reason is that the accumula-
ton of ice round the North and
South poles. the ice caps, ;" geolo-
gists call them, are ever getting
thicker and thicker. More ice is
formed by freezing during the long
Attic and Antarctic winters than is
lost through melting in the short
summers.
Meanwhile the water to form this
ice-billions on billions of tons of it,
minds being taken up by the sun
from the more temperate zones of the
globe.
Some day or other this process is
bound to affect the stability of the
earth. Ii will become top heavy, :"
and, as result, it will, as it were,
cant upon its axis.
The result will be that the pres
ent situation will be reversed. That
is to say, the poles will be some
where us opposite sides of what is
nov the equator, and the new equa-
tor will intersect what is now the
poles.
The result would be that world
wide earthquake would level all cit
les and towns, and even the hills and
mountains, nd the sea would sweep
over the ruins.
Have you ever noticed how, if a
fruit tart is left to cool without be-
ing cut, and without any opening
being left in the center to permit of
the internal heat escaping, the crust
will, as it becomes cold, sag down,
and permit the still hot juice to we'll
up over a portion of it's surface?
Now, this is exactly what Grant
Allen affirmed will happen one day
to the thinnest portions of the earth 8
crust.
He also affirmed the probability
that one area at all events, of such
thin crust, is situated in the Thames
Valley, near Cookham; and, arguing
from these premises, he drew a
graphic description of the destrue-
ton wrought by lava food, which
welled up near there, aud rolled
thence downward TO the sea.
The earth whereabouts, according
to Mr.. Allen, opened suddenly.
without an instant's warning, in a
gigantic crack, or assure, manv
miles long, whence millions of tons
of the white hot Stag gushed out.
and filled up the entire valley tc a
certain level, in and out among the
hills, exactly as water might do.
When II was over, in twenty-four
hours, London-as well as scores of
riverside towns no more. its
place being taken by the rapidly
congealing lava, afterward to be
known as the Great Glass Desert.
Richard Jeffries fully believed in
the possibility of the state of affairs
depicted by him in his wild Eng
land" -.
Briefly put, he aimed to show. in
the guise of romance, how COM
paratively easy it would be for this
country TO relapse into barbarism.
and what terrible results would en-
sue.
A sudden stoppage of the food sup
plies from over the sea, coupled with
civil war athome, causes general
exodus OF the better classes of the
population, and those that are left
give themselves up to murder and
pillage.
Agriculture is neglected, the
mouths of the rivers are silted mn
CO that .-Aos n:A.n i.