United States or Bulgaria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If, by chance, this island in the air includes that point on the earth's surface which once represented the most northerly spot the North Pole, in fact it is the North Pole no longer. The magnetic needle points instead to a new North Pole, established on this fragment of a planet since it was shot off into space from its parent world." Phineas Roebach grunted his disbelief in all this.
We are now to study the movements of the earth's crust which restore the sediments of the sea to the light of day, and to whose beneficence we owe the habitable lands of the present.
What good will come to the world with its discovery? Is it worth while to go on year after year, pouring out treasure and risking human lives, merely that any hardy explorer may stand at an imaginary point on the earth's surface which is already fixed geographically by scientists?" Let the scientists and the explorers answer, for to most of us the questions do not seem unreasonable.
Hot springs, mud-volcanoes, and vapour-vents abound all over the island, whilst earthquakes are by no means uncommon. There is a distinct line in the chain of these mountains which seems to point to a great fissure in the earth's crust, caused by the subterranean fires.
In a century, or even in a thousand years, there is but little recognisable difference in the shape of the track pursued by the earth. Vast periods of time are required for the development of the large consequences of planetary perturbation. Le Verrier has, however, given us the particulars of what the earth's journey through space has been at intervals of 20,000 years back from the present date.
A sun and its satellites in its course around some other center draws the earth and Mars so together that on some parts of the earth's surface the attraction of Mars would overcome that of the earth and gently suck up to itself inhabitants from the earth, who would not suffer death from loss of air, as the atmosphere of both bodies would be mingled.
Whilst the travellers were profoundly absorbed in the contemplation of this wondrous sight, a sparkling shower of shooting stars suddenly flashed over the Earth's dark surface, making it for a moment as bright as the external ring.
And if we go to the poetic or semi-poetic aspect of things, may I not ask whether there is not a certain sense in which the earth-envelope may be said to be solid? The air has a considerable density, its uniform and inexorable pressure on every square inch of the earth's surface is very great. It is obvious that a creative act was necessary for this "expanse."
But what I should like you to remember is that geologists of our own time tell us that the lowest layer of the earth's crust which has yet been explored appears to be made of vegetable remains, so crushed and altered by time and by the tremendous pressure of rocky layers lying above it, that though it is probably of the same material as that which forms the coal-measures, it resembles the blacklead of which pencils are made much more than the coal which you know is what has been formed by the decay of buried forests and jungles.
Thus the chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.
Word Of The Day