The Eruption of Vesuvius in 1872 Part 4

The result is now, as at all periods since the signs changed of the tangential forces thus brought into play--_i.e._, since they became tangential _pressures_--that the nucleus tends to shrink away as it were from beneath the crust, and to leave the latter, unsupported or but partially supported, as a spheroidal dome above it.

Now what happens? If the hollow spheroidal sh.e.l.l were strong enough to sustain, as a spheric dome, the tangential thrust of its own weight and the attraction of the nucleus, the sh.e.l.l would be left behind altogether by the nucleus, and the latter might be conceived as an independent globe revolving, centrally or excentrically, within a sh.e.l.l outside of it. This, however, is not what happens.

The question then arises, Can the solid sh.e.l.l support the tangential thrust to which it would be thus exposed? By the application to this problem of an elegant theorem of Lagrange, I have proved that it cannot possibly do so, no matter what may be its thickness nor what its material, even were we to a.s.sume the latter not merely of the hardest and most resistant rocks we know anything of, but even were it of tempered cast-steel, the most resistant substance (unless possibly iridio-osmium exceed it) that we know anything about. Lagrange has shown that if P be the normal pressure upon any flexible plate curved in both directions, the radii of these princ.i.p.al curvatures being ?' and ?'', and T the tangential thrust at the point of application and due to the force P, then:

P = T (1/?' + 1/?'')

When the surface is spherical, or may be viewed as such, ?' = ?'' and

P = 2T/? or, T = P ?/2

In the present case P is for a unit square (taken relatively small and so a.s.sumed as plane) of the sh.e.l.l, suppose a square mile, equal to the effect of gravity upon that unit, ? being the earth's radius, and if we a.s.sume the unit square be also a unit in thickness, P is then the weight of a cubic mile of its material; and if we take (roughly) the earth's radius as 4,000 miles, the tangential pressure, T, is, on _each face_ of the cubic mile, equal to

(4000/2) P,

or equal to the pressure of a column of the same material of 2,000 times its weight.

If the cubic mile that we have thus supposed cut out of the earth's crust at the surface were of the hardest known granite or porphyry, it would be exposed to a crushing tangential pressure equal to between 400 and 500 times what it could withstand, and so must crush, even though only left unsupported by the nucleus beneath, to the extent of 1/400 or 1/500 of its entire weight. And what is true here of a mile taken at the surface, is true (neglecting some minute corrections for difference in the co-efficient of gravity, etc.) if taken at any other depth within the thick crust.[F]

The crust of our earth, then, as it now is, must crush, to follow down after the shrinking nucleus--if so be that the globe be still cooling, and const.i.tuted as it is; even to the limited extent to which we know anything of its nature--it must crush unequally, both regarded superficially and as to depth; generally the crushing lines being confined to the planes or places of greatest weakness; and the crushing will not be absolutely constant and uniform anywhere, or at any time, or at any of those places of weakness to which it will be princ.i.p.ally confined, but will be more or less irregular, quasi-periodic, or paroxysmal: as is, indeed, the way in which all known material substances (more or less rigid) give way to a slow and constantly increasing, steady pressure.

We have now to ask, _How much_ of this crushing is going on at present year by year? And the answer to this depends upon what amount of heat our world is losing into s.p.a.ce year by year.

Geologists who have taken on trust the statement, that La Place has proved that the world has lost no sensible amount of heat for the last 10,000 years seem generally to suppose that to be a fact; but in reality La Place has _proved_ nothing of the sort, as those geological teachers who have echoed the conclusion should have known, had they deciphered the mathematical argument upon which it has been supposed to rest.

By application of Fourier's theorem (or definition) to the observed rate of increment of heat in descending from the geothermal _couche_ of invariable temperature, and the co-efficients of conductivity of the rocks of our earth's crust, as given by the long-continued observations made beneath the Observatories of Paris and of Edinburgh, it results that the annual loss of heat into s.p.a.ce of our globe at present is equal to that which would liquefy into water, at 32 Fahr., about 777 cubic miles of ice; and this is the measuring unit for the amount of contraction of our globe now going on. The figures are not probably exact, for the data are not on a basis sufficiently full or exactly established as yet; but they are not very widely wrong, and their precise exactness is not material here. Now, how is this annual loss of heat (great or small, as we may please to view it) from the interior of our globe disposed of?

What does it _do_ in the interior? We have already seen that it is primarily disposed of by conversion into work; into the work of diminishing the earth's volume as a whole, and in so doing crushing portions of the solid surrounding sh.e.l.l.

But does the transformation of lost heat into the work of vertical descent, and of the crush as it follows down after the shrinking nucleus, end the cycle? No. A very large portion of the mechanical work thus produced, and resolved, as we have seen, into tangential crushing pressure, is retransformed into heat again in the very act of crushing the solid material of the sh.e.l.l. If we see a cartload of granite paving-stones shot out in the dark, we see fire and light produced by their collision; if we rub two pieces of quartz together, and crush thus their surfaces against each other, we find we heat the pieces and evolve light.

The machinery used for crushing by steam-power, hard rocks into road metal, gets so hot that the surfaces cannot be touched.

These are familiar instances of one result of what is now taking place by the crushing of the rocky ma.s.ses of our cooling and descending earth's crust, every hour beneath our feet, only upon a vastly greater scale. It is in this local transformation of work into heat that I find the true origin of volcanic heat within our globe. But if we are to test this, so as in the only way possible to decide is it a true solution of this great problem, we must again ask the question, _How much?_ and to answer this, we must determine _experimentally_ how much heat can be developed by the crushing of a given volume, say a cubic mile, of such rocky materials as we know must const.i.tute the crust of our globe down to the bottom of the known sedimentary strata, and extending to such crystalloid rocks as we may presume underlie these. We must also obtain at least approximately what are the co-efficients of _total contraction_ between fusion and atmospheric temperature of such melted rocks, basic and acid silicates, as may be deemed representative of that co-efficient for the range of volcanic fused products, basalts, trachytes, etc., which probably sufficiently nearly coincide with that of the whole non-metallic ma.s.s of our globe.

The first I have determined experimentally by two different methods, but princ.i.p.ally by the direct one of the _work_ expended in crushing prisms of sixteen representative cla.s.ses of rock; the specific gravities and specific heats of which I have also determined.

If H be the height of a prism of rock crushed to powder by a pressure, P, applied to two opposite faces, which, when the prism has been reduced to its volume in powder, has acted through a range of H - t, then

P (H - t) / 772

is the heat corresponding to the work expended in the crushing, expressed in British units of heat. The following were the rocks experimented upon: Caen stone, Portland (both oolites), magnesian limestone, sandstones of various sorts, carboniferous limestones (marbles), the older slates (Cambrian and Silurian), basalts, various granites and porphyries, thus ranging from the newest and least resistant to the oldest and most resistant rocks. The results have been tabulated, and are given in detail in my Paper, now in possession of the Royal Society. The minimum obtained is 331 and the maximum 7,867 British units of heat developed, by transformation of the work of crushing one cubic foot of rock. If we apply the results to a thickness of solid crust of 100 miles (British), of which the upper twenty-one miles consist of neozoic, newer palaeozoic, older palaeozoic and azoic rocks in nearly equal proportion as to thickness, and the remaining eighty miles of crystalloid rocks (acid and basic magmas of Durocher) of physical properties which we may a.s.sume not very different from those of our known granites and porphyries--and which, in so far as they may differ, would give a still _higher_ co-efficient of work transformed into heat than I have attributed to them by ranging them as only equal to the granites, etc.--then we obtain a mean co-efficient for the entire thickness of crust of 100 miles of 6,472 British units of heat, developable from each cubic foot of its material, if crushed to powder.

It results from this that each cubic mile of the mean material of such a crust, when crushed to powder, developes sufficient heat to melt 0876 cubic miles of ice into water at 32, or to raise 7600 cubic miles of water from 32 to 212 Fahr., or to boil off 1124 cubic miles of water at 32 into steam of one atmosphere, or, taking the average melting point of rocky mixtures at 2,000 Fahr., to melt nearly three and a-half cubic miles of such rock, if of the same specific heat.

Of the heat annually lost by our globe and dissipated into s.p.a.ce, represented by 777 cubic miles of ice melted, as before stated, the chief part is derived from the actual hypogeal source of a hotter though not necessarily fused nucleus, and nearly, if not wholly, is quite independent of the heat of Vulcanicity, which is developed as a consequence of its loss or dissipation. But were we to take the extreme case, and suppose it possible that all the heat the globe loses annually resulted from the transformation of the work of internal crushing of its sh.e.l.l, we shall find that the total volume of rock needed to be crushed in order to produce the required amount of lost heat is perfectly insignificant as compared with the volume of the globe itself, or that of its sh.e.l.l. For, as 1270 cubic miles of crushed rock developes heat equivalent to that required to melt one cubic mile of ice to water at 32, and if we a.s.sume the volume of our globe's _solid_ crust to equal one-fourth of the total volume of the entire globe, 987 cubic miles of rock crushed annually would supply the whole of the heat dissipated in that time. But that is less than the _one sixty-five millionth_ of the volume of the crust only.

But a very small portion of the total heat annually lost by our globe is sufficient to account for the whole of the volcanic energy of every sort, including thermal waters, manifested annually upon our earth. In the absence of complete data, we can only approximately calculate what is the annual amount of present volcanic energy of our planet. This energy shows itself to us in three ways: 1. The heating or fusing of the ejected solid matters at volcanic vents. 2. The evolution of steam and other heated elastic fluids by which these are carried. 3. The work of raising through a certain height all the materials ejected. To which we must add a large allowance for waste, or thermal mechanical and chemical energy ineffectually dissipated in and above the vents. All these are measurable into units of heat.

I have applied this method of calculation to test the adequacy of the source I have a.s.signed for volcanic heat, in two ways, viz.: 1. To the phenomena presented during the last two thousand years by Vesuvius, the best known Volcano in the world; and 2. To the whole of the four hundred and odd volcanic cones observed so far upon our globe, of which not more than one-half have ever been known in activity.

It is impossible here to refer to the details of the method or steps of these calculations. The result however is, that making large allowances for presumably defective data, _less than one-fourth_ of the total telluric heat annually dissipated (as already stated in amount) is sufficient to account for the annual volcanic energy at present expended by our globe.

It is thus represented by the transformation into heat of the work of crushing about 247 cubic miles of (mean) rock, a quant.i.ty so perfectly insignificant, as compared with the volume of the globe itself, as to be absolutely inappreciable in any way but by calculation; and as its mechanical result is only the vertical transposition transitorily of material within or upon our globe, the proportion of the ma.s.s of which to the whole is equally insignificant, so not likely in any way to produce changes recognisable by the astronomer.

s.p.a.ce here forbids my entering at all upon that branch of my investigation which is based upon the experimental results, above mentioned, of the total contraction of fused rocks: for these, the original Paper can, I hope, be hereafter referred to. I am enabled, however, to prove thus how enormously more than needful has been the store of energy dissipated since our globe was wholly a melted ma.s.s, for the production, through the contraction of its volume, of all the phenomena of elevation and of Vulcanicity which its surface presents.

And how very small is the amount of that energy in a unit of time as now operative, when compared with the same at very remote epochs in our planet's history.

I have said that if we can find a true cause in Nature for the origination of volcanic _heat_, all the other known phenomena, at and about volcanic vents, become simple. Lavas and all other solid ejecta of Volcanoes, from all parts of the earth's surface, as well as basalts, present in chemical and physical const.i.tution close resemblance, and may be all referred to the melting of more or less fusible mixtures of siliceous crystalloid rocks with aluminous (slates, etc.) and calcareous rocks. Their general chemical composition, and the higher or lower temperatures of fusion resulting therefrom, together with the higher or lower temperatures to which they have been submitted at the different volcanic foci, determine their difference of flow (under like surface conditions) and of mineral character after ejection and cooling.

St. Clair de Ville and Fouque have shown that the gaseous ejections, of which steam forms probably 99 per cent., are such as arise from water admitted to a _pre-existent focus of high temperature_.

Whether sea or fresh water is not material, when we bear in mind that the chemical const.i.tuents found in sea water and in natural fresh waters that have penetrated the soil are, on the whole, alike in kind and only differ in proportions. But I must pa.s.s almost without notice all the varied and instructive phenomena which are presented by volcanic vents, for to treat of these at all would be to more than double the size of this sketch.

In the source that has been pointed out as that from which volcanic heat itself is derived, viz., the secular cooling of our globe, and the effects of that upon its solid sh.e.l.l, we are enabled to point to that which is the surest test of the truth of any theory--that it not only enables us to account for all the phenomena, near or remote, but to predict them. We see here linked together as parts of one grand play of forces, those of contraction by cooling, producing by _direct_ mechanical action the elevation of mountain chains, and by their _indirect_ action, by transformation of mechanical work into heat, the production of Volcanoes; and both by direct and by indirect action, of Earthquakes, never previously shown to have thus the physical connection of one common cause, but merely supposed, more or less, to be connected by their distribution upon our earth's surface.

We now discern thus the physical cause _why_ Volcanoes are distributed, viewed largely, linearly, and follow the lines of elevation; we see equally why their action is uncertain, non-periodic, fluctuating in intensity, with longer or shorter periods of repose, shifting in position, becoming extinct here, appearing in new activity or for the first time there. We have an adequate solution of the before inexplicable fact of their propinquity, and yet want of connection. We have an adequate cause for the fusion of rock at local points without resorting to the baseless hypothesis of perennial lakes of lava, etc.

For the first time, too, we discern a true physical cause for earthquake movement, where volcanic energy does not show itself. The crushing of the world's solid sh.e.l.l, whether thick or thin, goes on _per saltum_ and at ever-shifting places, however steadily the tangential pressures producing it may act. Hence crushing _alone_ may be shown to develope amply sufficient impulse to produce the most violent Earthquakes, whether they be or be not at a given place or time connected with volcanic outburst or possible injection, or with tangential pressures, enough still, in some cases, to produce partial permanent elevation.

When subterraneous crushing takes place, and the circ.u.mstances of the site do not permit the access of water, there may be Earthquake, but can be no Volcano; where water is admitted, there may be both.

And thus we discern why there are comparatively few submarine Volcanoes, the floor of the ocean being, on the whole, water-tight--"puddled," as an engineer would say, by the huge deposit of incoherent mud, etc., that covers most of it, and probably having a thicker crust beneath it than beneath the land.

We see, moreover, that the geological doctrine of absolute uniformity cannot be true as to Vulcanicity, any more than it can for any other energy in play in our world. Its development was greatest at its earliest stages, when the great ma.s.ses of the mountain chains were elevated. It is even now--though as compared to men's experience, and even to all historic time, apparently uniform and always the same--a decaying energy.

The regimen of our planet as part of the Cosmos, which seems to some absolute (and presented to Playfair no trace of a beginning nor indication of an end), is not absolute, and only seems to us to be so because we see so little of it, and of its long perspective in time.

This the now established doctrine of the conservation of energy renders certain.

With this source for volcanic heat, too, in our possession, we can look from our own world to others, and predict within certain limits, which must widen as our knowledge of the facts of their substance and surface becomes greater, what have been and what are the developments of Vulcanicity which have taken place or are occurring in or upon them.

Looking to our own satellite, we see for the first time a sufficient physical cause for the enormous display of volcanic energy there which the telescope divulges to us; one which is not to be explained alone by the commonly made statement of the small density of the moon, but by the fact that as the rate of her cooling from a given temperature, as compared with that of our earth (apart from questions of the chemical nature of the two bodies, or of their specific heats, etc.), has been inversely as their respective ma.s.ses, and directly as their surfaces, so has the rate of cooling of the moon been vastly greater than that of the earth, and the energy due to contraction by cooling more intense and rapidly developed in our satellite than upon our globe.

We have thus traced, in meagre and broken outline only--because s.p.a.ce admitted no more--the progress of Science to its existing state as respects Vulcanicity, in its two branches of Vulcanology and of Seismology, and pointed out their more intimate relations and points of connection, and been at length able to refer them, on the sure basis of physical laws, to one common cause, and that one derived from no hypothesis, but simply from the postulate of our world as a terr-aqueous globe cooling in s.p.a.ce.

What I have here advanced with reference to volcanic energy, which appertains to my own researches, I do not conceal from myself, nor from the reader, has yet to await the reception generally and the award of the true men of science of the world.

That, like every new line of thought which has attempted or succeeded in supplanting the old, it will meet with opposition, I make no doubt.

My belief, however, is that in the end it will be found to have added a fragment to the edifice of true knowledge.

The interpretation which I have given of the nature and origin of volcanic activity points at once to the function in the Cosmos which it is its destiny to fulfil. It is the instrument provided for the purpose of continually preserving the earth's solid sh.e.l.l in a state to follow down after the descending nucleus. It does this by an apparatus or play of mechanism whereby the material of the solid sh.e.l.l, locally or along certain lines, is not only crushed, but the crushed material is blown out as dust, or expelled as liquid rock from between the walls of the sh.e.l.l, which are thus enabled to approach each other; and thus, by relief of the tangential thrusts, to permit the sh.e.l.l to descend, which it is obvious that crushing alone, unless it extended to the whole ma.s.s of the sh.e.l.l, could not accomplish.

It is a wonderful example of Nature's mechanism thus to see how simple are the means by which this end is accomplished. The same inevitable crush that dislocates the solid sh.e.l.l along certain lines, produces the heat necessary to expel to the surface the material crushed.

When attempted to be made the basis for philosophic discovery, "final causes" are no doubt barren, as Bacon has said; but when we have independently and by strict methods arrived at a result, we may justly appeal, as a test of its truth, to its showing itself as plainly fulfilling a needful end, and, by a distinctly discernible mechanism, preserving that harmony and conservation which are the obvious law of the universe.

As has been said, if I mistake not by Daubeny, John Phillips, by Hersch.e.l.l, and by myself, the function of the Earthquake and the Volcano is not destructive but, preservative. But we now see that: that the preservative scope of this function, as respects our earth, is far wider than what has been previously attributed to it. The Volcano does not merely throw up new fertile soil, and tend, in some small degree, to restore to the dry land the waste for ever going on by rain and sea; it fulfils a far weightier and more imperative task; it--by a mechanism the power of which is exactly balanced to the variable calls demanded of it, and which working almost imperceptibly, although in a manner however terrible its surface-action may at times appear to us little men[G]--prevents at longer intervals such sudden and unlooked-for paroxysms in the ma.s.s of our subsiding earth's sh.e.l.l as would be attended with wide-spread destruction to all that it inhabit.

To the popular mind, Volcanoes and Earthquakes are only isolated items of curiosity amongst "the wonders of the world:" few geologists even appear to realise how great and important are the relations of Vulcanicity to their science, viewed as a whole. Yet of Vulcanicity it is not too much to say, that in proportion as its nature and doctrines come to be known and understood as parts of the Cosmos, the nearer will it be seen to lie at the basis of all Physical Geology.