Outlines of the Earth's History Part 11

In the ordinary succession of seasons we often note the occurrence of winters during which the precipitation of snow is much above the average, though it can not be explained by a considerable climatal change. We have to account for these departures from the normal weather by supposing that the atmospheric currents bring in more than the usual amount of moisture from the sea during the period when great falls of snow occur. In fact, in explaining variations in the humidity of the land, whether those of a constant nature or those that are to be termed accidental, we have always to look to those features which determine the importation of vapour from the great field of the ocean where it enters the air. We should furthermore note that these peculiarities of climate are dependent upon rather slight geographic accidents. Thus the snowfall of northern Europe, which serves to maintain the glaciation of that region, and, curiously enough, in some measure its general warmth, depends upon the movement of the Gulf Stream from the tropics to high lat.i.tudes. If by any geographical change, such as would occur if Central America were lowered so as to make a free pa.s.sage for its waters to the westward, the glaciers of Greenland and of Scandinavia would disappear, and at the same time the temperature of those would be greatly lowered. Thus the most evident cause of glaciation must be sought in those alterations of the land which affect the movement of the oceanic currents.

Applying this principle to the northern hemisphere, we can in a way imagine a change which would probably bring about a return of such an ice period as that from which the boreal realm is now escaping. Let us suppose that the region of not very high land about Bering Strait should sink down so as to afford the Kuro Siwo, or North Pacific equivalent of our Gulf Stream, an opportunity to enter the Arctic Sea with something like the freedom with which the North Atlantic current is allowed to penetrate to high lat.i.tudes. It seems likely that this Pacific current, which in volume and warmth is comparable to that of the Atlantic, would so far elevate the temperature of the arctic waters that their wide field would be the seat of a great evaporation.

Noting once again the fact that the Greenland glaciers, as well as those of Norway, are supplied from seas warmed by the Gulf Stream, we should expect the result of this change would be to develop similar ice fields on all the lands near that ocean.

Applying the data gathered by Dr. Croll for the Gulf Stream, it seems likely that the average annual temperature induced in the Arctic Sea by the free entrance of the j.a.pan current would be between 20 and 30 Fahr. This would convert this wide realm of waters into a field of great evaporation, vastly increasing the annual precipitation. It seems also certain that the greater part of this precipitation would be in the form of snow. It appears to the writer that this cause alone may be sufficient to account for the last Glacial period in the northern hemisphere. As to the probability that the region about Bering Strait may have been lowered in the manner required by this view, it may be said that recent studies on the region about Mount St.

Elias show that during or just after the ice epoch the sh.o.r.es in that portion of Alaska were at least four thousand feet lower than at present. As this is but a little way from the land which we should have to suppose to be lowered in order to admit the j.a.pan current, we could fairly conclude that the required change occurred. As for the cause of the land movement, geologists are still in doubt. They know, however, that the att.i.tudes of the land are exceedingly unstable, and that the sh.o.r.es rarely for any considerable time maintain their position. It is probable that these swayings of the earth's surface are due to ever-changing combinations of the weight in different parts of the crust and the strains arising from the contraction of its inner parts.

In the larger operations of Nature the effects which we behold, however simple, are rarely the products of a single cause. In fact, there are few actions so limited that they can fairly be referred to one influence. It is therefore proper to state that there are many other actions besides those above noted which probably enter into those complicated equations which determine the climatal conditions of the earth. To have these would carry us into difficult and speculative inquiries.

As before remarked, all the regions which have been subjected to glaciation are still each year brought temporarily into the glacial state. This fact serves to show us that the changes necessary to produce great ice sheets are not necessarily of a startling nature, however great the consequences may be. a.s.suming, then, that relatively slight alterations of climate may cause the ice sheet to come and go, we may say that all the influences which have been suggested by the students of glaciation, and various other slighter causes which can not be here noted, may have co-operated to produce the peculiar result. In this equation geographic change has affected the course of the ocean currents, and has probably been the most influential, or at least the commonest, cause to which we must attribute the extension of ice sheets. Next, alterations of the solar heat may be looked to as a change-bringing action; unfortunately, however, we have no direct evidence that this is an efficient cause. Thirdly, the variations in the eccentricity of the earth's...o...b..t, combined with the precession of the equinoxes and the rotation of the apsides, may be regarded as operative. The last of all, changes in the const.i.tution of the atmosphere, have to be taken into account. To these must be added, as before remarked, many less important actions which influence this marvellously delicate machine, the work of which is expressed in the phenomena a.s.sembled under the name of climate.

Evidence is slowly acc.u.mulating which serves to show that glacial periods of greater or less importance have been of frequent occurrence at all stages in the history of the earth of which we have a distinct record. As these accidents write their history upon the ground alone, and in a way impermanently, it is difficult to trace the ice times of ancient geological periods. The scratches on the bed rocks, and the acc.u.mulations of detritus formed as the ice disappeared, have alike been worn away by the agents of decay. Nevertheless, we can trace here and there in the older strata acc.u.mulations of pebbly matter often containing large boulders, which clearly were shaped and brought together by glacial action. These are found in some instances far south of the region occupied by the glaciers during the last ice epoch. They occur in rocks of the Cambrian or Silurian age in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina; they are also found in India beyond the limits to which glaciers have attained in modern times.

In closing this inadequate account of glacial action, a story which for its complete telling would require many volumes, it is well for the reader to consider once again how slight are the changes of climate which may alternately withdraw large parts of the land from the uses of life, and again quickly restore the fields to the service of plants and animals. He may well imagine that these changes, by driving living creatures to and fro, profoundly affect the history of their development. This matter will be dealt with in the volume concerning the history of organic beings.

When the ice went off from the northern part of this continent, the surface of the country, which had been borne down by the weight of the glacier, still remained depressed to a considerable depth below the level of the sea, the depression varying from somewhere about one hundred feet in southern New England to a thousand feet or more in high lat.i.tudes. Over this region, which lay beneath the level of the sea, the glacier, when it became thin enough to float, was doubtless broken up into icebergs, in the manner which we now behold along the coast of Greenland. Where the sh.o.r.e was swept by a strong current, these bergs doubtless drifted away; but along the most of the coast line they appear to have lain thickly grouped next the sh.o.r.es, gradually delivering their loads of stones and finer _debris_ to the bottom. These ma.s.ses of floating ice in many cases seem to have prevented the sea waves from attaining the sh.o.r.e, and thus hindered the formation of those beaches which in their present elevated condition enable us to interpret the old position of the sea along coast lines which have been recently elevated. Here and there, however, from New Jersey to Greenland, we find bits of these ancient sh.o.r.es which clearly tell the story of that down-sinking of the land beneath the burden of the ice which is such an instructive feature in the history of that period.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WORK OF UNDERGROUND WATER.

We have already noted two means by which water finds its way underground. The simplest and largest method by which this action is effected is by building in the fluid as the grains of the rock are laid down on the floors of seas or lakes. The water thus imprisoned is firmly inclosed in the interstices of the stone, it in time takes up into its ma.s.s a certain amount of the mineral materials which are contained in the deep-buried rocks. The other portion of the ground water--that with which we are now to be specially concerned--arises from the rain which descends into the crevices of the earth; it is therefore peculiar to the lands. For convenience we shall term the original embedded fluid _rock water_, and that which originates from the rain _crevice water_, the two forming the ma.s.s of the earth water.

The crevice water of the earth, although forming at no time more than a very small fraction of the hidden fluid, is an exceedingly potent geological agent, doing work which, though unseen, yet affords the very foundations on which rest the life alike of land and sea. When this water enters the earth, though it is purified of all mineral materials, it has already begun to acquire a share of a gaseous substance, carbonic acid, or, as chemists now term it, carbon dioxide, which enables the fluid to begin its role of marvellous activities. In its descent as rain, probably even before it was gathered in drops in the cloud realm, the water absorbs a certain portion of this gas from the atmosphere. Entering the realm of the soil, where the decaying organic matter plentifully gives forth carbon dioxide, a further store of the gas is acquired. At the ordinary pressure of the air, water may take in many times its bulk of the gas.

The immediate effect of carbonic acid when it is absorbed by water is greatly to increase the capacity which that fluid has for taking mineral matters into solution. When charged with this gas, in the measure in which it may be in the soil, water is able to dissolve about fifty times as much limestone as it can in its perfectly pure form take up. A familiar instance of this peculiar capacity which the gas gives may often be seen where the water from a soda-water fountain drips upon the marble slab beneath. In a few years this slab will be considerably corroded, though pure water would in the same time have had no effect upon it.

The first and by far the most important effect of crevice water is exercised upon the soil, which is at once the product of this action, and the laboratory where the larger part of the work is done.

Penetrating between the grains of the detrital covering, held in large quant.i.ties in the coating, and continually in slow motion, the gas-charged water takes a host of substances into solution, and brings them into a condition where they may react upon each other in the chemical manner. These materials are constantly being offered to the roots of plants and brought in contact with the underlying rock which has not pa.s.sed into the state of soil. The changes induced in this stony matter lead to its breaking up, or at least to its softening to the point where the roots can penetrate it and complete its destruction. Thus it comes about that the water which to a great extent divides the rocks into the state of soil, which is continually wearing away the material on the surface, or leaching it out through the springs, is also at work in restoring the layer from beneath.

The greater part of the water which enters the soil does not penetrate to any great depth in the underlying rocks, but finds its way to the surface after no long journey in the form of small springs.

Generally those superficial springs do not emerge through distinct channels, but move, though slowly, in a ma.s.sive way down the slopes until they enter a water course. Along the banks of any river, however small, or along the sh.o.r.es of the sea, a pit a few inches deep just above the level of the water will be quickly filled by a flow from this sheet which underlies the earth. At a distance from the stream this sheet spring is in contact with the bed rocks, and may be many feet below the surface, but it comes to the level of the river or the sea near their margins. Here and there the shape of the bed rocks, being like converging house roofs, causes the superficial springs to form small pipelike channels for the escape of their gathered waters, and the flow emerges at a definite point. Almost all these sources of considerable flow are due to the action of the water on the underlying rock, where we shall now follow that portion of the crevice water which penetrates deeply into the earth.

Almost all rocks, however firm they may appear to be, are divided by crevices which extend from the soil level it may be to the depths of thousands of feet. These rents are in part due to the strains of mountain-building, which tend to disrupt the firmest stone, leaving open fractures. They are also formed in other ways, as by the imperfectly understood agencies which produce joint planes. It often happens that where rocks are highly tilted water finds its way downward between the layers, which are imperfectly soldered together, or a bed of coa.r.s.e material, such as sandstone or conglomerate, may afford an easy way by which the water may descend for miles beneath the surface. Pa.s.sing through rocks which are not readily soluble, the water, already to a great extent supplied with mineral matter by its journey through the soil, may not do much excavating work, and even after a long time may only slightly enlarge the s.p.a.ces in which it may be stored or the channels by which it discharges to the surface.

Hence it comes about that in many countries, even where the waters penetrate deeply, they do not afford large springs. It is otherwise where the crevice waters enter limestones composed of materials which are readily dissolved. In such places we find the rain so readily entering the underlying rock that no part of the fall goes at once to the brooks, but all has a long underground journey.

In any limestone district where the beds of the material are thick and tolerably pure--as, for instance, in the cavern district of southern Kentucky--the traveller who enters the region notes at once that the usual small streams which in every region of considerable rainfall he is accustomed to see intersecting the surface of the country are entirely absent. In their place he notes everywhere pitlike depressions of bowl-shaped form, the sink holes to which we have already adverted. Through the openings in the bottom of these the rain waters descend into the depths of the earth. Although the most of these depressions have but small openings in their bottom, now and then one occurs with a vertical shaft sufficiently large to permit the explorer to descend into it, though he needs to be lowered down in the manner of a miner who is entering a shaft. In fact, the journey is nearly always one of some hazard; it should not be undertaken save with many precautions to insure safety.

When one is lowered away through an open sink hole, though the descent may at first be somewhat tortuous, the explorer soon finds himself swinging freely in the air, it may be at a point some hundred feet above the base of the bottle-shaped shaft or dome into which he has entered. Commonly the neck of the bottle is formed where the water has worked its way through a rather sandy limestone, a rock which was not readily dissolved by the water. In the pure and therefore easily cut limestone layers the cavity rapidly expands until the light of the lantern may not disclose its walls. Farther down there is apt to be a shelf composed of another impure limestone, which extends off near the middle of the shaft. If the explorer can land upon this shelf, he is sure to find that from this imperfect floor the cavern extends off in one or more horizontal galleries, which he may follow for a great distance until he comes to the point where there is again a well-like opening through the hard layer, with another dome-shaped base beneath.

Returning to the main shaft, the explorer may continue his descent until he attains the base of this vertical section of the cave, where he is likely to find himself delivered in a pool of water of no great depth, the bottom of which is occupied by a quant.i.ty of small, hard stones of a flinty nature, which have evidently come from the upper parts of the cavern. The close observer will have noted that here and there in the limestone there are flinty bits, such as those which he finds in the pool. From the bottom of the dome a determined inquirer can often make his way along the galleries which lead from that level, though it may be after a journey of miles to the point where he emerges from the cavern on the banks of an open-air river.

Although a journey by way of the sink holes through a cavern system is to be commended for the reason that it is the course of the caverning waters, it is, on the whole, best to approach the cave through their exits along the banks of a stream or through the chance openings which are here and there made by the falling in of their roofs. One advantage of this cavity of entrance is that we can thus approach the cavern in times of heavy rain when the processes which lead to their construction are in full activity. Coming in this way to one of the domes formed beneath a sink hole, we may observe in rainy weather that the water falling down the deep shaft strikes the bottom with great force; in many of the Kentucky caves it falls from a greater height than Niagara. At such times the stones in the basin at the bottom of the shaft are vigorously whirled about, and in their motion they cut the rocks in the bottom of the basin--in fact, this cavity is a great pot hole, like those at the base of open-air cascades. It is now easy to interpret the general principles which determine the architecture of the cavern realm.

When it first enters the earth all the work which the water does in the initial steps of cavern formation is effected by solution. As the crevice enlarges and deepens, the stream acquires velocity, and begins to use the bits of hard rock in boring. It works downward in this way by the mixed mechanical and chemical action until it encounters a hard layer. Then the water creeps horizontally through the soft stratum, doing most of its work by solution, until it finds a crevice in the floor through which it can excavate farther in the downward direction; so it goes on in the manner of steps until it burrows channels to the open stream. In time the vertical fall under the sink hole will cut through the hard layer, when the water, abandoning the first line of exit, will develop another at a lower level, and so in time it comes about that there may be several stories of the cave, the lowest being the last to be excavated. Of the total work thus done, only a small part is accomplished by the falling of the water, acting through the boring action of its tools, the bits of stone before mentioned; the princ.i.p.al part of the task is done by the solvent action of the carbonated waters on the limestone. In the system of caverns known as the Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, the writer has estimated that at least nine tenths of the stone was removed in the state of solution.

When first excavated, the chambers of a limestone cavern have little beauty to attract the eye. The curves of the walls are sometimes graceful, but the aspect of the chambers, though in a measure grand, is never charming. When, however, the waters have ceased to carve the openings, when they have been drained away by the formation of channels on a lower level, there commonly sets in a process known as stalact.i.tization, which transforms the scene into one of singular beauty. We have already noted the fact that everywhere in ordinary rocks there are crevices through which water, moving under the pressure of the fluid which is above, may find its way slowly downward. In the limestone roofs of caverns, particularly in those of the upper story, this ooze of water pa.s.ses through myriads of unseen fissures at a rate so slow that it often evaporates in the dry air without dropping to the floor. When it comes out of the rocks the water is charged with various salts of lime; when it evaporates it leaves the material behind on the roof. Where the outflow is so slight that the fluid does not gather into drops, it forms an incrustation of limy matter, which often gathers in beautiful flowerlike forms, or perhaps in the shape of a sheet of alabaster. Where drops are formed, a small, pendent cone grows downward from the ceiling, over which the water flows, and on which it evaporates. This cone grows slowly downward until it may attain the floor of the chamber, which has a height of thirty feet or more. If all the water does not evaporate, that which trickles off the apex of the cone, striking on the floor, is splashed out into a thin sheet, so that it evaporates in a speedy manner, lays down its limestone, and thus builds another and ruder cone, which grows upward toward that which is pendent above it.

Finally, they grow together, enlarged by the process which constructed them, until a mighty column may be formed, sculptured as if by the hands of a fantastic architect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13.--Stalact.i.tes and stalagmites on roof and floor of a cavern. The arrows show the direction of the moving water.]

All the while that subterranean streams are cutting the caverns downward the open-air rivers into which they discharge are deepening their beds, and thereby preparing for the construction of yet lower stories of caves. These open-air streams commonly flow in steep-sided, narrow valleys, which themselves were caves until the galleries became so wide that they could no longer support the roof. Thus we often find that for a certain distance the roof over a large stream has fallen in, so that the water flows in the open air. Then it will plunge under an arch and course, it may be, for some miles, before it again arrives at a place where the roof has disappeared, or perhaps attains a field occupied by rocks of another character, in which caverns were not formed. At places these old river caverns are abandoned by the streams, which find other courses. They form natural tunnels, which are not infrequently of considerable length. One such in southwestern Virginia has been made useful for a railway pa.s.sing from one valley to another, thus sparing the expense of a costly excavation. Where the remnant of the arch is small, it is commonly known as a natural bridge, of which that in Rockbridge County, in Virginia, is a very n.o.ble example. Arches of this sort are not uncommon in many cavern countries; five such exist in Carter County, Kentucky, a district in the eastern part of that State which abounds in caverns, though none of them are of conspicuous height or beauty.[7]

[Footnote 7: It is reported that one of these natural bridges of Carter County has recently fallen down. This is the natural end of these features. As before remarked, they are but the remnants of much more extensive roofs which the processes of decay have brought to ruin.]

At this stage of his studies on cavern work the student will readily conceive that, as the surface of the country overlying the cave is incessantly wearing down, the upper stories of the system are continually disappearing, while new ones are forming at the present drainage level of the country. In fact, the attentive eye can in such a district find here and there evidences of this progressive destruction. Not only do the caves wear out from above, but their roofs are constantly falling to their floors, a process which is greatly aided by the growth of stalact.i.tes. Forming in the crevices or joints between the stones, these rock growths sometimes prize off great blocks. In other cases the weight of the pendent stalact.i.te drags the ill-supported ma.s.ses of the roof to the floor. In this way a gallery originally a hundred feet below the surface may work its way upward to the light of day. The entrance by which the Mammoth Cave is approached appears to have been formed in this manner, and at several points in that system of caverns the effect of this action may be distinctly observed.

We must now go a step further on the way of subterranean water, and trace its action in the depths below the plane of ordinary caves, which, as we have noted, do not extend below the level of the main streams of the cavern district. The first group of facts to be attended to is that exhibited by artesian wells. These occur where rocks have been folded down into a basinlike form. It often happens that in such a basin the rocks of which it is composed are some of them porous, and others impervious to water, and that the porous layers outcrop on the high margins of the depression and have water-tight layers over them. These conditions can be well represented by supposing that we have two saucers, one within the other, with an intervening layer of sand which is full of water. If now we bore an opening in the bottom of the uppermost saucer, we readily conceive that the water will flow up through it. In Nature we often find these basins with the equivalent of the sandy layer in the model just described rising hundreds of feet above the valley, so that the artesian well, so named from the village of Artois, near Paris, where the first opening of this nature was made, may yield a stream which will mount upward, especially where piped, to a great height. At many places in the world it is possible by such wells to obtain a large supply of tolerably pure water, but in general it is found to contain too large a supply of dissolved mineral matter or sulphuretted gases to be satisfactory for domestic purposes. It may be well to note the fact that the greater part of the so-called artesian wells, or borings which deliver water to a height above the surface, are not true artesian sources, in that they do not send up the water by the action of gravitation, but under the influence of gaseous pressure.

Where, as in the case of upturned porous beds, the crevice water penetrates far below the earth's surface or the open-air streams which drain the water away, the fluid acquires a considerable increase of temperature, on the average about one degree Fahrenheit for each eighty feet of descent. It may, indeed, become so heated that if it were at the earth's surface it would not only burst into steam with a vast explosive energy, but would actually shine in the manner of heated solids. As the temperature of water rises, and as the pressure on it increases, it acquires a solvent power, and takes in rocky matter in a measure unapproached at the earth's surface. At the depth of ten miles water beginning as inert rain would acquire the properties which we are accustomed to a.s.sociate with strong acids.

Pa.s.sing downward through fissures or porous strata in the manner indicated in the diagram, the water would take up, by virtue of its heat and the gases it contained, a share of many mineral substances which we commonly regard as insoluble. Gold and even platinum--the latter a material which resists all acids at ordinary temperatures--enters into the solution. If now the water thus charged with mineral stores finds in the depths a shorter way to the surface than that which it descended, which may well happen by way of a deep rift in the rocks, it will in its ascent reverse the process which it followed on going down. It will deposit the several minerals in the order of their solubilities--that is, the last to be taken in will be the first to be crystallized on the walls of the fissure through which the upflow is taking place. The result will be the formation of a vein belonging to the variety known as fissure veins.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14.--Diagram of vein. The different shadings show the variations in the nature of the deposits.]

A vein deposit such as we are considering may, though rarely, be composed of a single mineral. Most commonly we find the deposit arranged in a banded form in the manner indicated in the figure (see diagram 14). Sometimes one material will abound in the lower portions of the fissure and another in its higher parts, a feature which is accounted for by the progressive cooling and relinquishment of pressure to which the water is subjected on its way to the surface.

With each decrement of those properties some particular substance goes out of the fluid, which may in the end emerge in the form of a warm or hot spring, the water of which contains but little mineral matter.

Where, however, the temperature is high, some part of the deposit, even a little gold, may be laid down just about the spring in the deposits known as sinter, which are often formed at such places.

In many cases the ore deposits are formed not only in the main channel of the fissure, but in all the crevices on either side of that way. In this manner, much as in the case of the growth of stalact.i.tic matter between the blocks of stone in the roofs of a cavern, large fragments of rock, known as "horses," are often pushed out into the body of the vein. In some instances the growth of the vein appears to enlarge the fissure or place of the deposit as the acc.u.mulation goes on, the process being a.n.a.logous to that by which a growing root widens the crevice into which it has penetrated. In other instances the fissure formed by the force has remained wide open, or at most has been but partly filled by the action of the water.

It not infrequently happens that the ascending waters of hot springs entering limestones have excavated extensive caves far below the surface of the earth, these caverns being afterward in part filled by the ores of various metals. We can readily imagine that the water at one temperature would excavate the cavern, and long afterward, when at a lower heat, they might proceed to fill it in. At a yet later stage, when the surface of the country had worn down many thousands of feet below the original level, the mineral stores of the caverns may be brought near the surface of the earth. Some of the most important metalliferous deposits of the Cordilleras are found in this group of hot-water caverns. These caverns are essentially like those produced by cold water, with the exception of the temperature of the fluid which does the work and the opposite direction of the flow.

In following crevice water which is free to obey the impulses of gravitation far down into the earth, we enter on a realm where the rock or construction water, that which was built into the stone at the time of its formation, is plentiful. Where these two groups of waters come in contact an admixture occurs, a certain portion of the rock water joining that in the crevices. Near the surface of the ground we commonly find that all the construction water has been washed out by this action. Yet if the rocks be compact, or if they have layers of a soft and clayey nature, we may find the construction water, even in very old deposits, remaining near the surface of the ground. Thus in the ancient Silurian beds of the Ohio Valley a boring carried a hundred feet below the level of the main rivers commonly discovers water which is clearly that laid down in the crevices of the material at the time when the rocks were formed in the sea. In all cases this water contains a certain amount of gases derived from the decomposition of various substances, but princ.i.p.ally from the alteration of iron pyrite, which affords sulphuretted hydrogen. Thus the water is forced to the surface with considerable energy, and the well is often named artesian, though it flows by gas pressure on the principle of the soda-water fountain, and not by gravity, as in the case of true artesian wells.

The pa.s.sage between the work done by the deeply penetrating surface water and that due to the fluid intimately blended with the rock built into the ma.s.s at the time of its formation is obscure. We are, however, quite sure that at great depths beneath the earth the construction water acts alone not only in making veins, but in bringing about many other momentous changes. At a great depth this water becomes intensely heated, and therefore tends to move in any direction where a chance fissure or other accident may lessen the pressure. Creeping through the rocks, and moving from zones of one temperature to another, these waters bring about in the fine interstices chemical changes which lead to great alterations in the const.i.tution of the rock material. It is probably in part to these slow driftings of rock water that beds originally made up of small, shapeless fragments, such as compose clay slates, sandstones, and limestones, may in time be altered into crystalline rocks, where there is no longer a trace of the original bits, all the matter having been taken to pieces by the process of dissolving, and reformed in the regular crystalline order. In many cases we may note how a crystal after being made has been in part dissolved away and replaced by another mineral. In fact, many of our rocks appear to have been again and again made over by the slow-drifting waters, each particular state in their construction being due to some peculiarity of temperature or of mineral contents which the fluid held. These metamorphic phenomena, though important, are obscure, and their elucidation demands some knowledge of petrographic science, that branch of geology which considers the principles of rock formation. They will therefore not be further considered in this work.

VOLCANOES.

Of old it was believed that volcanoes represented the outpouring of fluid rock which came forth from the central realm of the earth, a region which was supposed still to retain the liquid state through which the whole ma.s.s of our earth has doubtless pa.s.sed. Recent studies, however, have brought about a change in the views of geologists which is represented by the fact that we shall treat volcanic phenomena in connection with the history of rock water.

In endeavouring to understand the phenomena of volcanoes it is very desirable that the student should understand what goes on in a normal eruption. The writer may, therefore, be warranted in describing some observations which he had an opportunity to make at an eruption of Vesuvius in 1883, when it was possible to behold far more than can ordinarily be discerned in such outbreaks--in fact, the opportunity of a like nature has probably not been enjoyed by any other person interested in volcanic action. In the winter of 1882-'83 Vesuvius was subjected to a succession of slight outbreaks. At the time of the observations about to be noted the crater had been reduced to a cup about three hundred feet in diameter and about a hundred feet deep.

The vertical shaft at the bottom, through which the outbursts were taking place, was about a hundred feet across. Taking advantage of a heavy gale from the northwest, it was practicable, notwithstanding the explosions, to climb to the edge of the crater wall. Looking down into the throat of the volcano, although the pit was full of whirling vapours and the heat was so great that the protection of a mask was necessary, it was possible to see something of what was going on at the moment of an explosion.

The pipe of the volcano was full of white-hot lava. Even in a day of sunshine, which was only partly obscured by the vapours which hung about the opening, the heat of the lava made it very brilliant. This ma.s.s of fluid rock was in continuous motion, swaying violently up and down the tube. From four to six times a minute, at the moment of its upswaying, it would burst as by the explosion of a gigantic bubble.

The upper portion of the ma.s.s was blown upward in fragments, the discharge being like that of shot from a fowling piece; the fragments, varying in size from small, shotlike bits to ma.s.ses larger than a man's head, were shot up sometimes to the height of fifteen hundred feet above the point of ejection. The wind, blowing at the rate of about forty miles an hour, drove the falling bits of rock to the leeward, so that there was no considerable danger to be apprehended from them. Some seconds after the explosion they could be heard rattling down on the farther slope of the cone. Observations on the interval between the discharge and the fall of the fragments made it easy to compute the height to which they were thrown.

At the moment when the lava in the pipe opened for the pa.s.sage of the vapour which created the explosion the movement, though performed in a fraction of a second, was clearly visible. At first the vapour was colourless; a few score feet up it began to a.s.sume a faint, bluish hue; yet higher, when it was more expanded, the tint changed to that of steam, which soon became of the ordinary aspect, and gathered in swift-revolving clouds. The watery nature of the vapour was perfectly evident by its odour. Though commingled with sulphurous-acid gas, it still had the characteristic smell of steam. For a half hour it was possible to watch the successive explosions, and even to make rough sketches of the scene. Occasionally the explosions would come in quick succession, so that the lava was blown out of the tube; again, the pool would merely sway up and down in a manner which could be explained only by supposing that great bubbles of vapour were working their way upward toward the point where they could burst. Each of these bubbles probably filled a large part of the diameter of the pipe. In general, the phenomena recalled the escape of the jet from a geyser, or, to take a familiar instance, that of steam from the pipe of a high-pressure engine. When the heat is great, steam may often be seen at the mouth of the pipe with the same transparent appearance which was observed in the throat of the crater. In the cold air of the mountain the vapour was rapidly condensed, giving a rainbow hue in the clouds when they were viewed at the right angle. The observations were interrupted by the fact that the wind so far died away that large b.a.l.l.s of the ejected lava began to fall on the windward side of the cone. These fragments, though cooled and blackened on their outside by their considerable journey up and down through the air, were still so soft that they splashed when they struck the surface of cinders.

Watching the cone from a distance, one could note that from time to time the explosions, increasing in frequency, finally attained a point where the action appeared to be continuous. The transition was comparable to that which we may observe in a locomotive which, when it first gets under way, gives forth occasional jets of steam, but, slowly gaining speed, finally pours forth what to eye and ear alike seem to be a continuous outrush. All the evidence that we have concerning volcanic outbreaks corroborates that just cited, and is to the effect that the essence of the action consists in the outbreak of water vapour at a high temperature, and therefore endowed with very great expansive force. Along with this steam there are many other gases, which always appear to be but a very small part of the whole escape of a vaporous nature--in fact, the volcanic steam, so far as its chemical composition has been ascertained, has the composition which we should expect to find in rock water which had been forced out from the rock by the tensions that high temperature creates.

Because of its conspicuous nature, the lava which flows from most volcanoes, or is blown out from them in the form of finely divided ash, is commonly regarded as the primary feature in a volcanic outbreak. Such is not really the case. Volcanic explosions may occur with very little output of fluid rock, and that which comes forth may consist altogether of the finely divided bits of rock to which we give the name of ash. In fact, in all very powerful explosions we may expect to find no lava flow, but great quant.i.ties of this finely divided rock, which when it started from the depths of the earth was in a fluid state, but was blown to pieces by the contained vapour as it approached the surface.

If the student is so fortunate as to behold a flood of lava coming forth from the flanks of a volcano, he will observe that even at the very points of issue, where the material is white-hot and appears to be as fluid as water, the whole surface gives forth steam. On a still day, viewed from a distance, the path of a lava flow is marked by a dense cloud of this vapour which comes forth from it. Even after the lava has cooled so that it is safe to walk upon it, every crevice continues to pour forth steam. Years after the flowing has ceased, and when the rock surface has become cool enough for the growth of certain plants upon it, these crevices still yield steam. It is evident, in a word, that a considerable part of a lava ma.s.s, even after it escapes from the volcanic pipes, is water which is intimately commingled with the rock, probably lying between the very finest grains of the heated substance. Yet this lava which has come forth from the volcano has only a portion of the water which it originally contained; a large, perhaps the greater part, has gone forth in the explosive way through the crater. It is reasonably believed that the fluidity of lava is in considerable measure due to the water which it contains, and which serves to give the ma.s.s the consistence of paste, the partial fluidity of flour and rock grains being alike brought about in the same manner.

So much of the phenomena of volcanoes as has been above noted is intended to show the large part which interst.i.tial water plays in volcanic action. We shall now turn our attention again to the state of the deeply buried rock water, to see how far we may be able by it to account for these strange explosive actions. When sediments are laid down on the sea floor the materials consist of small, irregularly shaped fragments, which lie tumbled together in the manner of a ma.s.s of bricks which have been shot out of a cart. Water is buried in the plentiful inters.p.a.ces between these bits of stone; as before remarked, the amount of this construction water varies. In general, it is at first not far from one tenth part of the materials. Besides the fluid contained in the distinct s.p.a.ces, there is a share which is held as combined water in the intimate structure of the crystals, if such there be in the ma.s.s. When this water is built into the stone it has the ordinary temperature of the sea bottom. As the depositing actions continue to work, other beds are formed on the top of that which we are considering, and in time the layer may be buried to the depth of many thousand feet. There are reasons to believe that on the floors of the oceans this burial of beds containing water may have brought great quant.i.ties of fluid to the depth of twenty miles or more below the outer surface of the rocks.