Outlines of the Earth's History Part 7

Nothing is known as to the rate of this bottom drift from the polar districts toward the equator, but, from some computation which he has made, the writer is of the opinion that several centuries is doubtless required for the journey from the Arctic Circle to the tropics. The speed of the movement probably varies; it may at times require some thousand years for its accomplishment. The effect of the bottom drift is to withdraw from seas in high lat.i.tudes the very cold water which there forms, and to convey it beneath the seas of middle lat.i.tudes to a realm where it is well placed for the reheating process. If all the cold water of circ.u.mpolar regions had to journey over the surface to the equator, the perturbing effect of its flow on the climates of various lands would be far greater than it is at present. Where such cold currents exist the effect is to chill the air without adding much to the rainfall; while the currents setting northward not only warm the regions near which they flow, but by so doing send from the water surfaces large quant.i.ties of moisture which fall as snow or rain. Thus the Gulf Stream, directly and indirectly, probably contributes more than half the rainfall about the Atlantic basin. The lack of this influence on the northern part of North America and Asia causes those lands to be sterilized by cold, although dest.i.tute of permanent ice and snow upon their surfaces.

We readily perceive that the effect of the oceanic circulation upon the temperatures of different regions is not only great but widely contrasted. By taking from the equatorial belt a large part of the heat which falls within that realm, it lowers the temperature to the point which makes the district fit for the occupancy of man, perhaps, indeed, tenable to all the higher forms of life. This same heat removed to high lat.i.tudes tempers the winter's cold, and thus makes a vast realm inhabitable which otherwise would be locked in almost enduring frosts. Furthermore, this distribution of temperatures tends to reduce the total wind energy by diminishing the trades and counter trades which are due to the variations of heat which are encountered in pa.s.sing polarward from the equator. Still further, but for this circulation of water in the sea, the oceans about the poles would be frozen to their very bottom, and this vast sheet of ice might be extended southward to within the parallels of fifty degrees north and south lat.i.tude, although the waters under the equator might at the same time be unendurably hot and unfit for the occupancy of living beings.

A large part of the difficulties which geologists encounter in endeavouring to account for the changes of the past arise from the evidences of great climatal revolutions which the earth has undergone.

In some chapters of the great stone book, whose leaves are the strata of the earth, we find it plainly written in the impressions made by fossils that all the lands beyond the equatorial belt have undergone changes which can only be explained by the supposition that the heat and moisture of the countries have been subjected to sudden and remarkable changes. Thus in relatively recent times thick-leaved plants which retained their vegetation in a rather tender state throughout the year have flourished near to the poles, while shortly afterward an ice sheet, such as now covers the greater part of Greenland, extended down to the line of the Ohio River at Cincinnati.

Although these changes of climate are, as we shall hereafter note, probably due to entangled causes, we must look upon the modifications of the ocean streams as one of the most important elements in the causation. We can the more readily imagine such changes to be due to the alterations in the course and volume of the ocean current when we note how trifling peculiarities in the geography of the sh.o.r.es--features which are likely to be altered by the endless changes which occur in the form of a continent--affect the run of these currents. Thus the growth of coral reefs in southern Florida, and, in general, the formation of that peninsula, by narrowing the exit of the great current from the Gulf of Mexico, has probably increased its velocity. If Florida should again sink down, that current would go forth into the North Atlantic with the speed of about a mile an hour, and would not have momentum enough to carry its waters over half the vast region which they now traverse. If the lands about the western border of the Caribbean Sea, particularly the Isthmus of Darien, should be depressed to a considerable depth below the ocean level, the tropical current would enter the Pacific Ocean, adding to the temperature of its waters all the precious heat which now vitalizes the North Atlantic region. Such a geographic accident would not only profoundly alter the life conditions of that part of the world, but it would make an end of European civilization.

In the chapter on climatal changes further attention will be given to the action of ocean currents from the point of view of their influence on the heat and moisture of different parts of the world. We now have to consider the last important influence of ocean currents--that which they directly exercise on the development of organic life. The most striking effect of this nature which the sea streams bring about is caused by the ceaseless transportation to which they subject the eggs and seeds of animals and plants, as well as the bodies of the mature form which are moved about by the flowing waters. But for the existence of these north and south flowing currents, due to the presence of the continental barriers, the living tenants of the seas would be borne along around the earth, always in the same lat.i.tude, and therefore exposed to the same conditions of temperature. In this state of affairs the influences which now make for change in organic species would be far less than they are. Journeying in the great whirlpools which the continental barriers make out of the westward setting tropical currents, these organic species are ever being exposed to alterations in their temperature conditions which we know to be favourable to the creation of those variations on which the advance of organic life so intimately depends. Thus the ocean currents not only help to vary the earth by producing changes in the climate of both sea and land, breaking up the uniformity which would otherwise characterize regions at the same distance from the equator, but they induce, by the consequences of the migrations which they enforce, changes in the organic tenants of the sea.

Another immediate effect of ocean streams arises where their currents of warm water come against sh.o.r.es or shallows of the sea. At these points, if the water have a tropical temperature, we invariably find a vast and rapid development of marine animals and plants, of which the coral-making polyps are the most important. In such positions the growth of forms which secrete solid skeletons is so rapid that great walls of their remains acc.u.mulate next the sh.o.r.e, the ma.s.s being built outwardly by successive growths until the realm of the land may be extended for scores of miles into the deep. In other cases vast mounds of this organic _debris_ may be acc.u.mulated in mid ocean until its surface is interspersed with myriads of islands, all of which mark the work due to the combined action of currents and the marine life which they nourish. Probably more than four fifths of all the islands in the tropical belt are due in this way to the life-sustaining action of the currents which the trade winds create.

There are many secondary influences of a less important nature which are due to the ocean streams. The reader will find on most wall-maps of the world certain areas in the central part of the oceans which are noted as Sarga.s.sum seas, of which that of the North Atlantic, west and south of the Azore Islands, is one of the most conspicuous. In these tracts, which in extent may almost be compared with the continents, we find great quant.i.ties of floating seaweed, the entangled fronds of which often form a ma.s.s sufficiently dense to slightly restrain the speed of ships. When the men on the caravels of Columbus entered this tangle, they were alarmed lest they should be unable to escape from its toils. It is a curious fact that these weeds of the sea while floating do not reproduce by spores the structures which answer to the seeds of higher plants, but grow only by budding. It seems certain that they could not maintain their place in the ocean but for the action of the currents which convey the bits rent off from the sh.o.r.es where the plant is truly at home. This vast growth of plant life in the Sarga.s.sum basins doubtless contributed considerable and important deposits of sediment to the sea floors beneath the waters which it inhabits. Certain ancient strata, known as the Devonian black shale, occupying the Ohio valley and the neighbouring parts of North America to the east and north of that basin, appear to be acc.u.mulations which were made beneath an ancient Sarga.s.sum sea.

The ocean currents have greatly favoured and in many instances determined the migrations not only of marine forms, but of land creatures as well. Floating timber may bear the eggs and seeds of many forms of life to great distances until the rafts are cast ash.o.r.e in a realm where, if the conditions favour, the creatures may find a new seat for their life. Seeds of plants incased in their often dense envelopes may, because they float, be independently carried great distances. So it comes about that no sooner does a coral or other island rise above the waters of the sea than it becomes occupied by a varied array of plants. The migrations of people, even down to the time of the voyages which discovered America, have in large measure been controlled by the run of the ocean streams. The tropical set of the waters to the westward helped Columbus on his way, and enabled him to make a journey which but for their a.s.sistance could hardly have been accomplished. This same current in the northern part of the Gulf Stream opposed the pa.s.sage of ships from northern Europe to the westward, and to this day affects the speed with which their voyages are made.

THE CIRCUIT OF THE RAIN.

We have now to consider those movements of the water which depend upon the fact that at ordinary temperatures the sea yields to the air a continued and large supply of vapour, a contribution which is made in lessened proportion by water in all stages of coldness, and even by ice when it is exposed to dry air. This evaporation of the sea water is proportional to the temperature and to the dryness of the air where it rests upon the ocean. It probably amounts on the average to somewhere about three feet per annum; in regions favourably situated for the process, as on the west coast of northern Africa, it may be three or four times as much, while in the cold and humid air about the poles it may be as little as one foot. When contributed to the air, the water enters on the state of vapour, in which state it tends to diffuse itself freely through the atmosphere by virtue of the motion which is developed in particles when in the vaporous or gaseous state.

The greater part of the water evaporated from the seas probably finds its way as rain at once back into the deep, yet a considerable portion is borne away horizontally until it encounters the land. The precipitation of the water from the air is primarily due to the cooling to which it is subjected as it rises in the atmosphere. Over the sea the ascent is accomplished by the simple diffusion of the vapour or by the uprise through the aerial shaft, such as that near the equator or over the centres of the whirling storms. It is when the air strikes the slopes of the land that we find it brought into a condition which most decidedly tends to precipitate its moisture.

Lifted upward, the air as it ascends the slopes is brought into cooler and more rarefied conditions. Losing temperature and expanding, it parts with its water for the same reason that it does in the ascending current in the equatorial belt or in the chimneys of the whirl storms.

A general consequence of this is that wherever moisture-laden winds from the sea impinge upon a continent they lay down a considerable part of the water which they contain.

If all the lands were of the same height, the rain would generally come in largest proportion upon their coastal belt, or those portions of the sh.o.r.e-line districts over which the sea winds swept. But as these winds vary in the amount of the watery vapour which they contain, and as the surface of the land is very irregular, the rainfall is the most variable feature in the climatal conditions of our sphere. Near the coasts it ranges from two or three inches in arid regions--such as the western part of the Sahara and portions of the coast regions of Chili and Peru--to eight hundred inches about the head waters of the Brahmapootra River in northern India, where the high mountains are swept over by the moisture-laden airs from the neighbouring sea. Here and there detached mountainous ma.s.ses produce a singular local increase in the amount of the rainfall. Thus in the lake district in northwestern England the rainfall on the seaward side of mountains, not over four thousand feet high, is very much greater than it is on the other slope, less than a score of miles away. These local variations are common all over the world, though they are but little observed.

In general, the central parts of continents are likely to receive much less rainfall than their peripheral portions. Thus the central districts of North America, Asia, and Australia--three out of the five continental ma.s.ses--have what we may call interior deserts. Africa has one such, though it is north of the centre, and extends to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The only continent without this central nearly rainless field is South America, where the sole characteristic arid district is situated on the western slope of the Cordilleran range. In this case the peculiarity is due to the fact that the strong westerly setting winds which sweep over the country encounter no high mountains until they strike the Andean chain. They journey up a long and rather gradual slope, where the precipitation is gradually induced, the process being completed when they strike the mountain wall. Pa.s.sing over its summit, they appear as dry winds on the Pacific coast.

Even while the winds frequently blow in from the sea, as along the western coast of the Americas, they may come over water which is prevailingly colder than the land. This is characteristically the case on the western faces of the American continent, where the sea is cooled by the currents setting toward the equator from high lat.i.tudes.

Such cool sea air encountering the warm land has its temperature raised, and therefore does not tend to lay down its burden of moisture, but seeks to take up more. On this account the rainfall in countries placed under such conditions is commonly small.

By no means all the moisture which comes upon the earth from the atmosphere descends in the form of rain or snow. A variable, large, though yet undetermined amount falls in the form of dew. Dew is a precipitation of moisture which has not entered the peculiar state which we term fog or cloud, but has remained invisible in the air. It is brought to the earth through the radiation of heat which continually takes place, but which is most effective during the darkened half of the day, when the action is not counterbalanced by the sun's rays. While the sun is high and the air is warm there is a constant absorption of moisture in large part from the ground or from the neighbouring water areas, probably in some part from those suspended stores of water, the clouds, if such there be in the neighbourhood. We can readily notice how clouds drifting in from the sea often melt into the dry air which they encounter. Late in the afternoon, even before the sun has sunk, the radiation of heat from the earth, which has been going on all the while, but has been less considerable than the incurrent of temperature, in a way overtakes that influx. The air next the surface becomes cooled from its contact with the refrigerating earth, and parts with its moisture, forming a coating of water over everything it touches. At the same time the moisture escaping from the warmed under earth likewise drops back upon its cooled surface almost as soon as it has escaped. The thin sheet of water precipitated by this method is quickly returned to the air when it becomes warmed by the morning sunshine, but during the night quant.i.ties of it are absorbed by the plants; very often, indeed, with the lowlier vegetation it trickles down the leaves and enters the earth about the base of the stem, so that the roots may appropriate it. Our maize, or Indian corn, affords an excellent example of a plant which, having developed in a land of droughts, is well contrived, through its capacities for gathering dew, to protect itself against arid conditions. In an ordinary dew-making night the leaves of a single stem may gather as much as half a pint of water, which flows down their surfaces to the roots. So efficient is this dew supply, this nocturnal cloudless rain, that on the western coast of South America and elsewhere, where the ordinary supply of moisture is almost wanting, many important plants are able to obtain from it much of the water which they need. The effect is particularly striking along seash.o.r.es, where the air, although it may not have the humidity necessary for the formation of rain, still contains enough to form dew.

It is interesting to note that the quant.i.ty of dew which falls upon an area is generally proportioned to the amount of living vegetation which it bears. The surfaces of leaves are very efficient agents of radiation, and the tangle which they make offers an amount of heat-radiating area many times as great as that afforded by a surface of bared earth. Moreover, the ground itself can not well cool down to the point where it will wring the moisture out of the air, while the thin membranes of the plants readily become so cooled. Thus vegetation by its own structure provides itself with means whereby it may be in a measure independent of the accidental rainfall. We should also note the fact that the dewfall is a concomitant of cloudless skies. The quant.i.ty which is precipitated in a cloudy night is very small, and this for the reason that when the heavens are covered the heat from the earth can not readily fly off into s.p.a.ce. Under these conditions the temperature of the air rarely descends low enough to favour the precipitation of dew.

Having noted the process by which in the rain circuit the water leaves the sea and the conditions of distribution when it returns to the earth, we may now trace in more detail the steps in this great round. First, we should take note of the fact that the water after it enters the air may come back to the surface of the earth in either of two ways--directly in the manner of dewfall, or in a longer circuit which leads it through the state of clouds. As yet we are not very well informed as to the law of the cloud-making, but certain features in this picturesque and most important process have been tolerably well ascertained.

Rising upward from the sea, the vapour of water commonly remains transparent and invisible until it attains a considerable height above the surface, where the cooling tends to make it a.s.sume again the visible state of cloud particles. The formation of these cloud particles is now believed to depend on the fact that the air is full of small dust motes, exceedingly small bits of matter derived from the many actions which tend to bring comminuted solid matter into the air, as, for instance, the combustion of meteoric stones, which are greatly heated by friction in their swift course through the air, the ejections of volcanoes, the smoke of forest and other fires, etc.

These tiny bits, floating in the air, because of their solid nature radiate their heat, cool the air which lies against them, and thereby precipitate the water in the manner of dew, exactly as do the leaves and other structures on the surface of the earth. In fact, dew formation is essentially like cloud formation, except that in the one case the water is gathered on fixed bodies, and in the other on floating objects. Each little dust raft with its cargo of condensed water tends, of course, to fall downward toward the earth's surface, and, except for the winds which may blow upward, does so fall, though with exceeding slowness. Its rate of descent may be only a few feet a day. It was falling before it took on the load of water; it will fall a little more rapidly with the added burden, but even in a still air it might be months or years before it would come to the ground. The reason for this slow descent may not at first sight be plain, though a little consideration will make it so.

If we take a shot of small size and a feather of the same weight, we readily note that their rate of falling through the air may vary in the proportion of ten to one or more. It is easy to conceive that this difference is due to the very much less friction which the smaller body encounters in its motion by the particles of air. With this point in mind, the student should observe that the surface presented by solid bodies in relation to their solid contents is the greater the smaller the diameter. A rough, though not very satisfactory, instance of this principle may be had by comparing the surface and interior contents of two boxes, one ten feet square and the other one foot square. The larger has six hundred feet of surface to one thousand cubic feet of interior, or about half a square foot of outer surface to the cubic foot of contents; while the smaller box has six feet of surface for the single cubic foot of interior, or about ten times the proportion of exterior to contents. The result is that the smaller particles encounter more friction in moving toward the earth, until, in the case of finely divided matter, such as the particles of carbon in the smoke from an ordinary fire, the rate of down-falling may be so small as to have little effect in the turbulent conditions of atmospheric motion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Pocket Creek, Cape Ann, Ma.s.sachusetts. Note the relatively even size of the pebbles, and the splash wave which sets them in motion._]

The little drops of water which gather round dust motes, falling but slowly toward the earth, are free to obey the attractions which they exercise upon each other--impulses which are partly gravitative and partly electrical. We have no precise knowledge concerning these movements, further than that they serve to aggregate the myriad little floats into cloud forms, in which the rafts are brought near together, but do not actually touch each other. They are possibly kept apart by electrical repulsion. In this state of a.s.sociation without union the divided water may undergo the curiously modified aggregations which give us the varied forms of clouds. As yet we know little as to the cause of cloud shapes. We remark the fact that in the higher of these agglomerations of condensed vapour, the clouds which float at an elevation of from twenty to thirty thousand feet or more, the ma.s.ses are generally thin, and arranged more or less in a leaflike form, though even here a tendency to produce spherical clouds is apparent.

In this high realm floating water is probably in the frozen state, answering to the form of dew, which we call h.o.a.r frost. The lower clouds, gathering in the still air, show very plainly the tendency to agglomerate into spheres, which appears to be characteristic of all vaporous material which is free to move by its own impulses. It is probable that the spherical shape of clouds is more or less due to the same conditions as gathered the stellar matter from the ancient nebular chaos into the celestial spheres. Upon these spherical aggregations of the clouds the winds act in extremely varied ways. The cloud may be rubbed between opposite currents, and so flattened out into a long streamer; it may take the same form by being carried off by a current in the manner of smoke from a fire; the spheres may be kept together, so as to form the patchwork which we call "mackerel"

sky; or they may be actually confounded with each other in a vast common cloud-heap. In general, where the process of aggregation of two cloud bodies occurs, changes of temperature are induced in the ma.s.ses which are mixed together. If the temperature resulting from this a.s.sociation of cloud ma.s.ses is an average increase, the cloud may become lighter, and in the manner of a balloon move upward. Each of the motes in the cloud with its charge of vapour may be compared with the ballast of the balloon; if they are warmed, they send forth a part of their load of condensed water again to the state of invisible vapour. Rising to a point where it cools, the vapour gathers back on the rafts and tends again to weight the cloud downward. The ballast of an ordinary balloon has to be thrown away from its car; but if some arrangement for condensing the moisture from the air could be contrived, a balloon might be brought into the adjustable state of a cloud, going up or down according as it was heated or cooled.

When the formation of the drop of water or snowflake begins, the ma.s.s is very small. If in descending it encounters great thickness of cloud, the bit may grow by further condensation until it becomes relatively large. Generally in this way we may account for the diversities in the size of raindrops or snowflakes. It often happens that the particles after taking on the form of snowflakes encounter in their descent air so warm that they melt into raindrops, or, if only partly melted, reach the surface as sleet. Or, starting as raindrops, they may freeze, and in this simple state may reach the earth, or after freezing they may gather other frozen water about them, so that the hailstone has a complicated structure which, from the point of view of cla.s.sification, is between a raindrop and a snowflake.

In the process of condensation--indeed, in the steps which precede the formation of rain and snow--there is often more or less trace of electrical action; in fact, a part of the energy which was involved in the vapourization of water, on its condensation, even on the dust motes appears to be converted into electrical action, which probably operates in part to keep the little aggregates of water asunder. When they coalesce in drops or flakes, this electricity often a.s.sumes the form of lightning, which represents the swift pa.s.sage of the electric store from a region where it is most abundant to one where it is less so. The variations in this process of conveying the electricity are probably great. In general, it probably pa.s.ses, much as an electric current is conveyed, through a wire from the battery which produces the force. In other cases, where the tension is high, or, in other words, where the discharge has to be hastened, we have the phenomena of lightning in which the current burns its way along its path, as it may traverse a slender wire, vapourizing it as it goes. In general, the lightning flash expends its force on the air conductors, or lines of the moist atmosphere along which it breaks its path, its energy returning into the vapour which it forms or the heat which it produces in the other parts of the air. In some cases, probably not one in the thousand of the flashes, the charge is so heavy that it is not used up in its descent toward the earth, and so electrifies, or, as we say, strikes, some object attached to the earth, through which it pa.s.ses to the underlying moisture, where it finds a convenient place to take on a quiet form. Almost all these hurried movements of electrical energy which intensely heat and light the air which they traverse fly from one part of a cloud to another, or cross from cloud sphere to cloud sphere; of those which start toward the earth, many are exhausted before they reach its surface, and even those that strike convey but a portion of their original impulse to the ground.

The wearing-out effect of lightning in its journey along the air conductors in its flaming pa.s.sages is well ill.u.s.trated by what happens when the charge strikes a wire which is not large enough freely to convey it. The wire is heated, generally made white hot, often melted, and perhaps scattered in the form of vapour. In doing this work the electricity may, and often is, utterly dissipated--that is, changed into heat. It has been proposed to take advantage of this principle in protecting buildings from lightning by placing in them many thin wires, along which the current will try to make its way, being exhausted in melting or vaporizing the metal through which it pa.s.ses.

There are certain other forms of lightning, or at least of electrical discharges, which produce light and which may best be described in this connection. It occasionally happens that the earth becomes so charged that the current proceeds from its surface to the clouds. More rarely, and under conditions which we do not understand, the electric energy is gathered into a ball-like form, which may move slowly along the surface until it suddenly explodes. It is a common feature of all these forms of lightning which we have noted that they ordinarily make in their movement considerable noise. This is due to the sudden displacement of the air which they traverse--displacement due to the action of heat in separating the particles. It is in all essential regards similar to the sounds made by projectiles, such as meteors or swift cannon shots, as they fly through the air. It is even more comparable to the sound produced by exploding gunpowder. The first sound effect from the lightning stroke is a single rending note, which endures no longer--indeed, not as long--as the explosion of a cannon.

Heard near by, this note is very sharp, reminding one of the sound made by the breaking of gla.s.s. The rolling, continuous sound which we commonly hear in thunder is, as in the case of the noise produced by cannon, due to echo from the clouds and the earth. Thunder is ordinarily much more prolonged and impressive in a mountainous country than in a region of plains, because the steeps about the hearer reverberate the original single crash.

The distribution of thunderstorms is as yet not well understood, but it appears in many cases that they are attendants on the advancing face of cyclones and hurricanes, the area in front of these great whirlstorms being subjected to the condensation and irregular air movements which lead to the development of much electrical energy.

There are, however, certain parts of the earth which are particularly subjected to lightning flashes. They are common in the region near the equator, where the ascending currents bring about heavy rains, which mean a rapid condensation and consequent liberation of electrical energy. They diminish in frequency toward the arctic regions. An observer at the pole would probably fail ever to perceive strong flashes. For the same reason thunderstorms are more frequent in summer, the time when the difference in temperature between the surface and the upper air is greatest, when, therefore, the uprushes of air are likely to be most violent. They appear to be more common in the night than in the daytime, for the reason that condensation is favoured by the cooling which occurs in the dark half of the day. It is rare, indeed, that a thunderstorm occurs near midday, a period when the air is in most cases taking up moisture on account of the swiftly increasing heat.

There are other forms of electrical discharges not distinctly connected with the then existing condensation of moisture. What the sailors call St. Elmo's fire--a brush of electric light from the mast tops and other projections of the ship--indicates the pa.s.sage of electrical energy between the vessel and the atmosphere. Similar lights are said sometimes to be seen rising from the surface of the water. Such phenomena are at present not satisfactorily explained.

Perhaps in the same group of actions comes the so-called "Jack-o'-lantern" or "Will-o'-the-wisp" fires flashing from the earth in marshy places, which are often described by the common people, but have never been observed by a naturalist. If this cla.s.s of illuminations really exists, we have to afford them some other explanation than that they are emanations of self-inflamed phosph.o.r.etted hydrogen, a method of accounting for them which illogically finds a place in many treatises on atmospheric phenomena.

A gas of any kind would disperse itself in the air; it could not dance about as these lights are said to do, and there is no chemical means known whereby it could be produced in sufficient purity and quant.i.ty from the earth to produce the effects which are described.[3]

[Footnote 3: The present writer has made an extended and careful study of marsh and swamp phenomena, and is very familiar with the aspect of these fields in the nighttime. He has never been able to see any sign of the Jack-o'-lantern light. Looking fixedly into any darkness, such as is afforded by the depths of a wood, the eye is apt to imagine the appearance of faint lights. Those who have had to do with outpost duty in an army know how the anxious sentry, particularly if he is new to the soldier's trade, will often imagine that he sees lights before him.

Sometimes the pickets will be so convinced of the fact that they see lights that they will fire upon the fiction of the imaginations. These facts make it seem probable that the Jack-o'-lantern and his companion, the Will-o'-the-wisp, are stories of the overcredulous.]

In the upper air, or perhaps even beyond the limits of the field which deserves the name, in the regions extending from the poles to near the tropics, there occur electric glowings commonly known as the aurora borealis. This phenomenon occurs in both hemispheres. These illuminations, though in some way akin to those of lightning, and though doubtless due to some form of electrical action, are peculiar in that they are often attended by glows as if from clouds, and by pulsations which indicate movements not at electric speed. As yet but little is known as to the precise nature of these curious storms. It has been claimed, however, that they are related to the sun spots; those periods when the solar spots are plenty, at intervals of about eleven years, are the times of auroral discharges. Still further, it seems probable that the magnetic currents of the earth, that circling energy which encompa.s.ses the sphere, moving round in a general way parallel to the equator, are intensified during these illuminations of the circ.u.mpolar skies.

GEOLOGICAL WORK OF WATER.

We turn now to the geological work which is performed by falling water. Where the rain or snow returns from the clouds to the sea, the energy of position given to the water by its elevation above the earth through the heat which it acquired from the sun is returned to the air through which it falls or to the ocean surface on which it strikes. In this case the circuit of the rain is short and without geological consequence which it is worth while to consider, except to note that the heat thus returned is likely to be delivered in another realm than that in which the falling water acquired the store, thus in a small way modifying the climate. When, however, the precipitation occurs on the surface of the land, the drops of frozen or fluid water apply a part of their energy in important geological work, the like of which is not done where they return at once to the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.--Showing the diverse action of rain on wooded and cleared fields, _a_, wooded area; _b_, tilled ground.]

We shall first consider what takes place when the water in the form of drops of rain comes to the surface of the land. Descending as they do with a considerable speed, these raindrops apply a certain amount of energy to the surface on which they fall. Although the beat of a raindrop is proverbially light, the stroke is not ineffective.

Observing what happens where the action takes place on the surface of bare rock, we may notice that the grains of sand or small pebbles which generally abound on such surfaces, if they be not too steeply inclined, dance about under the blows which they receive. If we could cover hard plate gla.s.s, a much firmer material than ordinary stone, with such bits, we should soon find that its surface would become scratched all over by the friction. Moreover, the raindrops perceptibly urge the small detached bits of stone down the slopes toward the streams.

If all the earth's surface were bare rocks, the blow of the raindrops would deserve to be reckoned among the important influences which lead to the wearing of land. As it is, when a country is in a state of Nature, only a small part of its surface is exposed to this kind of wearing. Where there is rain enough to effect any damage, there is sure to be sufficient vegetation to interpose a living and self-renewed covering between the rocks and the rain. Even the lichens which coat what at first sight often seems to be bare rock afford an ample covering for this purpose. It is only where man bares the field by stripping away and overturning this protecting vegetation that the raindrops cut away the earth. The effect of their action can often be noted by observing how on ploughed ground a flat stone or a potsherd comes after a rain to cap a little column. The geologist sometimes finds in soft sandstones that the same action is repeated in a larger way where a thin fragment of hard rock has protected a column many feet in height against the rain work which has shorn down the surrounding rock.

When water strikes the moistened surface it at once loses the droplike form which all fluids a.s.sume when they fall through the air.[4]

[Footnote 4: This principle of the spheroidal form in falling fluids is used in making ordinary bird shot. The melted lead drops through sievelike openings, the resulting spheres of the metal being allowed to fall into water which chills them. Iron shot, used in cutting stone, where they are placed between the saw and the surface of the rock, are also made in the same manner. The descending fluid divides into drops because it is drawn out by the ever-increasing speed of the falling particles, which soon make the stream so thin that it can not hold together.]

When the raindrops coalesce on the surface of the earth, the role of what we may call land water begins. Thenceforward until the fluid arrives at the surface of the sea it is continually at work in effecting a great range of geological changes, only a few of which can well be traced by the general student. The work of land water is due to three cla.s.ses of properties--to the energy with which it is endowed by virtue of its height above the sea, a power due to the heat of the sun; to the capacity it has for taking substances into solution; and to its property of giving some part of its own substance to other materials with which it comes in contact. The first of these groups of properties may be called dynamical; the others, chemical.

The dynamic value of water when it falls upon the land is the amount of energy it can apply in going down the slope which separates it from the sea. A ton of the fluid, such as may gather in an ordinary rain on a thousand square feet of ground in the highlands of a country--say at an elevation of a thousand feet above the sea--expends before it comes to rest in the great reservoir as much energy as would be required to lift that weight from the ocean's surface to the same height. The ways in which this energy may be expended we shall now proceed in a general way to trace.

As soon as the water has been gathered, from its drop to its sheet state--a process which takes place as soon as it falls--the fluid begins its downward journey. On this way it is at once parted into two distinct divisions, the surface water and the ground water: the former courses more or less swiftly, generally at the rate of a mile or more an hour, in the light of day; the latter enters the interstices of the earth, slowly descends therein to a greater or less depth, and finally, journeying perhaps at the rate of a mile a year, rejoins the surface water, escaping through the springs. The proportion of these two cla.s.ses, the surface and the ground water, varies greatly, and an intermixture of them is continually going on. Thus on the surface of bare rock or frozen earth all the rain may go away without entering the ground. On very sandy fields the heaviest rainfall may be taken up by the porous earth, so that no streams are found. On such surfaces the present writer has observed that a rainfall amounting to six inches in depth in two hours produced no streams whatever. We shall first follow the history of the surface water, afterward considering the work which the underground movements effect.

If the student will observe what takes place on a level ploughed field--which, after all, will not be perfectly level, for all fields are more or less undulating--he will note that, though the surface may have been smoothed by a roller until it appears like a floor, the first rain, where the fall takes place rapidly enough to produce surface streams, will create a series of little channels which grow larger as they conjoin, the whole appearing to the eye like a very detailed map, or rather model, of a river system; it is, indeed, such a system in miniature. If he will watch the process by which these streamlet beds are carved, he will obtain a tolerably clear idea as to that most important work which the greater streams do in carving the face of the lands. The water is no sooner gathered into a sheet than, guided by the slightest irregularities which it encounters, it begins to flow. At first the motion is so slow that it does not disturb its bed, but at some points in the bottom of the sheet the movement soon becomes swift enough to drag the grains of sand and clay from their adhesions, bearing them onward. As soon as this beginning of a channel is formed the water moves more swiftly in the clearer way; it therefore cuts more rapidly, deepening and enlarging its channel, and making its motion yet more free. The tiny rills join the greater, all their channels sway to and fro as directed this way and that by chance irregularities, until something like river basins are carved out, those gentle slopes which form broad valleys where the carving has been due to the wanderings of many streams. If the field be large, considerable though temporary brooks may be created, which cut channels perhaps a foot in depth. At the end of this miniature stream system we always find some part of the waste which has been carved out. If the streamlet discharges into a pool, we find the tiny representative of deltas, which form such an important feature on the coast line where large rivers enter seas or lakes. Along the lines of the stream we may observe here and there little benches, which are the equivalent in all save size of the terraces that are generally to be observed along the greater streams. In fact, these accidents of an acre help in a most effective way the student to understand the greater and more complicated processes of continental erosion.

A normal river--in fact, all the greater streams of the earth--originates in high country, generally in a region of mountains.

Here, because of the elevation of the region, the streams have cut deep gorges or extensive valleys, all of which have slopes leading steeply downward to torrent beds. Down these inclined surfaces the particles worn off from the hard rock by frost and by chemical decay gradually work their way until they attain the bed of the stream. The agents which a.s.sist gravitation in bearing this detritus downward are many, but they all work together for the same end. The stroke of the raindrop accomplishes something, though but little; the direct washing action of the brooklets which form during times of heavy rain, but dry out at the close of the storm, do a good deal of the work; thawing and freezing of the water contained in the ma.s.s of detritus help the movement, for, although the thrust is in both directions, it is most effective downhill; the wedges of tree roots, which often penetrate between and under the stones, and there expand in their process of growth, likewise a.s.sist the downward motion. The result is that on ordinary mountain slopes the layer of fragments const.i.tuting the rude soil is often creeping at the rate of from some inches to some feet a year toward the torrent bed. If there be cliffs at the top of the slope, as is often the case, very extensive falls of rock may take place from it, the ma.s.ses descending with such speed that they directly attain the stream. If the steeps be low and the rock divided into vertical joints, especially where there is a soft layer at the base of the steep, detached ma.s.ses from the precipice may move slowly and steadfastly down the slope, so little disturbed in their journey that trees growing upon their summits may continue to develop for the thousands of years before the ma.s.s enters the stream bed.

Although the fall of rocks from precipices does not often take place in a conspicuously large way, all great mountain regions which have long been inhabited by man abound in traditions and histories of such accidents. Within a century or two there have been a dozen or more catastrophes of this nature in the inhabited valleys of the Alps. As these accidents are at once instructive and picturesque, it is well to note certain of them in some detail. At Yvorgne, a little parish on the north sh.o.r.e of the Rhone, just above the lake of Geneva, tradition tells that an ancient village of the name was overwhelmed by the fall of a great cliff. The vast _debris_ forming the steep slope which was thus produced now bears famous vineyards, but the vintners fancy that they from time to time hear deep in the earth the ringing of the bells which belonged to the overwhelmed church. In 1806 the district of Goldau, just north of Lake Lucerne, was buried beneath the ruins of a peak which, resting upon a layer of clay, slipped away like a launching ship on the surface of the soft material. The _debris_ overwhelmed a village and many detached houses, and partly filled a considerable lake. The wind produced by this vast rush of falling rock was so great that people were blown away by it; some, indeed, were killed in this singular manner.