Popular Science Monthly/Volume 56/February 1900/A Century of Geology I
| A CENTURY OF GEOLOGY.[1] |
By Prof. JOSEPH LE CONTE.
GEOLOGY is one of the youngest of the sciences. It may almost be said to have been born of the present century. It is true that knowledge concerning the structure of the earth had been accumulating ever since the time of the Greeks and Romans; it is true that these materials became more abundant and were better organized in the eighteenth century; but this knowledge had not yet taken form as a distinct branch of science until about the end of that century. There are two distinctive marks of scientific as compared with popular knowledge: First, that its fundamental idea is clearly conceived; and, second, that its method is distinctly inductive.
1. Fundamental Idea.—The fundamental idea underlying geological thought is the history of the earth. Now, until the beginning of the present century the earth was not supposed to have any history. It was supposed to have been made at once, out of hand, about six thousand years ago, and to have remained substantially unchanged ever since as the necessary theater of human history. Changes were known to have taken place and in less degree to be still taking place, but these were not supposed to follow any law such as is necessary to constitute a history, and thus to constitute a science distinct from geography. Buffon, about the middle of the last century, did indeed bring out dimly the idea of an abyss of time, preceding the advent of man, in which the earth was inhabited by animals and plants wholly different from those of the present day, but he was compelled by the priests of the Sorbonne to retract these supposed irreligious views. So tardily was the fundamental idea of geology clearly conceived that Comte, the great originator of scientific philosophy, in his classification of the sciences in 1820, denied a place to geology because, according to him, it was not a distinct science at all, but only a field for the application of all the sciences. It is evident that he did not perceive the fundamental idea underlying geology and distinguishing it from geography—viz., a life history of the earth through all time. The claim of geology to a place in a scheme of classification is exactly the same as that of astronomy. As astronomy is a field for the application of mathematics, mechanics, physics, and, recently, chemistry, but is distinguished from them all by its characteristic fundamental idea of illimitable space, so geology is a field for the application of all other lower sciences, but is distinguished from them all by her characteristic fundamental idea of illimitable time. As all other sciences are terrestrial, but astronomy alone celestial, so all other sciences belong to the present—the "now"—but geology alone belongs to the illimitable past. The fundamental idea of the one is infinite space, of the other infinite, in sense of inconceivable, time. All other sciences, including astronomy, are but a flash-light view of Nature. Geology alone is a view of Nature in continuous movement, a life history—an evolution of Nature. This mode of thought began to dawn only in the closing years of the last and the opening years of the present century. It seems to have been first clearly conceived by the mind of Hutton in the last part of the eighteenth century.
2. Inductive Method Applied.—When the true idea underlying geology was clearly conceived and geology thus distinctly separated from other departments of science, geology may be said to have been born. But it was still in helpless infancy, its growth irregular, and even its continuous life uncertain, because a solid basis of inductive method was not yet laid. That basis was laid mainly by Hutton in 1795,[2] and still more clearly by Charles Lyell in 1830, in the principle that the study of causes now in operation is the only true foundation of geology.
Geological changes, of course, belong to the irrevocable past, and are therefore hopelessly removed from direct observation. Their causes and process must be reconstructed by the skillful use of the scientific imagination. Until Lyell, more or less probable hypotheses seemed all that was possible. What a field was here for the conflict of opposite extreme views! But Lyell showed that "causes now in operation" are producing similar effects under our eyes, if we will only observe. From that moment geology became a truly inductive science and its indefinite progress assured.
These two events, then—viz., the conception of geology as a distinct science, and the introduction of a true scientific method—are the greatest epochs in the history of geological science. Some dim adumbrations of these appear before this century, especially the former in the mind of Buffon, and the latter somewhat fully in the mind of Hutton, but they were not generally accepted and had not become working principles until the beginning and even some time after the beginning of the nineteenth century. These must be borne in mind in all we have further to say of the progress of geology through the century.
When the century opened, the war between the Neptunists and the Plutonists, between the Wernerites and the Huttonites, was still going on, but was approaching the usual result in such cases of dispute—viz., the recognition of the fact that there was truth on both sides, and they must be combined into a more comprehensive view. The chief difference of opinion still remaining was as to the relative importance of the two agencies, aqueous and igneous. Two great advances took place about the beginning of this century: William Smith, by patient, painstaking field observation and mapping, laid the foundation of stratigraphy; and Cuvier, by his profound and brilliant studies of the wonderful discoveries of extinct mammals in the Eocene basin of Paris, laid the foundations of paleontology. These researches placed in clearer light than ever before the existence of other time-worlds before the present one. William Smith published his tabular view of the British Strata in 1790, but his map was not completed and published until 1815. Cuvier's great work on the Organic Remains of the Paris Basin was published in 1808.
Thus, early in the century the two bases of our science were laid by Smith and Cuvier. We now proceed to touch lightly only the main steps of subsequent growth through the century.
As, in the previous century and the early part of this, the discussion was between the opposite schools of Neptunists and Plutonists, with the final result of reconciliation in a more scientific view which combined these two surface views into a stereoscopic reality, so now the discussions began between catastrophism and uniformitarianism, and ended with a similar final result. Geologists, in the early part of the century, before the study of causes and processes now in operation was generally acknowledged as the only rational basis of a true scientific geology, seeing the frequent unconformities in the geological series and the apparently sudden changes of life forms associated with these unconformities, were naturally led to the conclusion that the whole history of the earth consisted of a series of sudden and violent catastrophes by which the bed of the ocean was suddenly raised and its waters precipitated on the land as a great wave of translation, carrying universal ruin and extermination of all life in its course. Such catastrophes were supposed to be followed by periods of quiet, during which the new earth was repeopled, by direct act of creation, with new forms of life adapted to the new conditions.
This view was in perfect accord with the then accepted doctrine of the supernatural origin and the permanence of species. Species were supposed to have been created at once, out of hand, without natural process, in some place (center of specific origin), spread in all directions as far as physical conditions would allow, but remained unchanged and unchangeable as long as they continued to live or until another universal exterminating catastrophe. Species are "medals of creation." They are successive individuals struck from the same die, until the die is worn out or broken. Then a new die is made, and the process of coinage of identical individuals is renewed.
Thus the whole history of the earth was supposed to consist of a succession of alternate supernatural and natural events. The catastrophes were supernatural; the times of quiet were natural. The creation of new dies or creation of first individuals was supernatural; the coinage of individuals of successive generations was natural. But on the whole the successive conditions of physical geography and the successive faunas and floras were higher and more complex according to a preordained plan. The great apostles of catastrophism were Cuvier in France and Buckland in England. According to Buckland, the last of these great catastrophes was the Quaternary or drift period, and this period was, by him and by many others since, associated with the Noachian Deluge.
Lyell opposed this view with all his power. According to him we can not judge of geological causes and processes except by study of causes and processes now in operation and producing effects under our eyes. The slow operation of similar causes and processes is sufficient—given time enough—to account for all the phenomena in geological history. Thus arose the extreme opposite doctrine of uniformitarianism. Things have gone on from the beginning and throughout all time much as they are going on now. This view, of course, required illimitable time, and was of great service in enforcing this idea. But, in revulsion from the previous idea of catastrophism, it undoubtedly was pushed much too far.
Meanwhile the theory of evolution was incubating in the mind of Darwin. Even Lyell, while he established the doctrine of slow uniform changes so far as inorganic Nature was concerned, was still compelled to admit supernatural catastrophic changes in organic Nature. Species, even for Lyell, were still immutable—still there were supernatural creation of first individuals, and continuance of similar individuals by natural process of generation. On the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species by Descent with Modification, Lyell at once embraced the new view as a completion of his principle of causes now in operation and his doctrine of uniformitarianism. In a certain superficial sense evolution is certainly confirmatory of the doctrine of uniformity of causes and processes in the past and the present, but in a deeper sense it is quite contrary in its spirit. Uniformitarians of the Lyell school look upon geology as a chronicle of events—evolutionists as a life history of the earth. The one regards the slow changes as irregular, uncertain, without progress or purpose or goal; the other as an evolution to higher and higher conditions, as a gradual movement onward toward the present condition and toward man as its goal. The recognition of this is only now approaching clearness. If geology is the history of the evolution of the earth from primal chaos until now, then the conditions have changed at every step, and absolute uniformity is impossible. Extreme uniformitarianism is therefore untenable. Catastrophism and uniformitarianism are opposite extremes which must be combined and reconciled. This reconciliation is only now being completed, and we therefore put off its discussion for the present. Suffice it to say now that geologic thought in this regard has passed through three stages—catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and evolutionism. And this latter is the final stage, because (1) it is a complete reconciliation between the other two, and (2) because it is plastic and indefinitely modifiable and progressive, while the other two are equally rigid and unchangeable by their mutual antagonism.
With these fundamental principles in mind, we proceed to touch briefly the most important advances during the century.
EVOLUTION OF EARTH FORMS.
The idea of the progressive development of the earth in its greater features throughout all geologic time by the action of forces resident in the earth itself preceded the acceptance of the evolution of organic forms. We have said that the fundamental idea of geology is that of the evolution of the earth through all time. Now, it was Dana who first studied geology wholly from this point of view. For him geology was the development of the earth as a unit. Before him, doubtless, geology was a kind of history—i.e., a chronicle of thrilling events—but Dana first made it a philosophic history. Before Dana, geology was an account of the succession of formations and their fossil contents. Dana made it an account of the evolution of earth forms and the concomitant and resulting evolution of organic forms. It is true that first and for a long time his evolutional conception was incomplete. It is true that while he attributed the evolution of earth forms to natural causes and processes, he still shrank from applying similar causes to the changes in life forms, but this was the almost necessary result of the then universal belief in the supernatural origin and the unchangeableness of organic forms. He lived to make his conception of evolution as a natural process, both of the earth and of organic forms, complete.
Ocean Basins and Continents.—If we divide geological causes and processes into two general kinds as to their origin—viz., internal, or earth-derived, and external, or sun-derived—evidently the former is the original and fundamental kind. These determine earth forms, while the other only modify them; these determine the great features, the other only the lesser features; the former rough-hews the earth features, the latter shapes them. It is the effects of these interior earth forces which are the most important to study. And among these effects the most fundamentally important of all is the formation of those greatest features—the ocean basins and continental arches. The most probable view is that they are formed by unequal radial contraction in the secular cooling of the earth. The earth was certainly at one time an incandescently hot mass, which gradually cooled and contracted to its present temperature and size. Now, if it were perfectly homogeneous both in density and in conductivity in all parts, then, cooling and contracting equally in every part, it would retain its symmetric oblate-spheroid form, though diminishing in size. But if there were any, the least, heterogeneity either in density or especially in conductivity over large areas, then the more conductive areas, contracting more rapidly toward the center radially, would form hollows or basins, and the less conductive areas would stand out as higher arches. Thus were formed the oceanic basin and the continental arches of the lithosphere. The same causes which produced would continue to increase them, and thus the ocean basins would increase in depth and the continents in height.
The hydrosphere is still to be added. In the beginning of this process doubtless the lithosphere was hot enough to maintain all the water in the form of vapor in the atmosphere. But when the surface was cool enough the water would precipitate and partly or wholly cover the earth—whether partly or wholly would depend on the amount of precipitated water and the amount of inequality which had already taken place. The amount of water, as we know, is sufficient, if the inequalities were removed, to cover the whole surface two and a half miles deep. Inasmuch as the forming of the inequalities is progressive and still going on, it seems improbable that the inequalities had become sufficiently great, at the time of precipitation, to hold the waters. If this be so, then the primeval ocean was universal and the future continents existed only as continental banks in the universal ocean.
However this may have been, there seems little doubt that the same cause which produced the inequalities continued to operate to increase them. The ocean basins, so far as these causes are concerned, must have become deeper and deeper, and the continents larger and larger. In spite of many oscillations producing changes mostly on the margins, but sometimes extending over wide areas in the interior of the continent, this, on the whole, seems to be in accordance with the known geological history of the earth. If so, then the oceanic basins have always been oceanic basins, and the places of the continents have always been substantially the same. This introduces a subject on which there has been much discussion recently—viz.:
The Permanency of Ocean Basins.—Closely associated with the Lyellian uniformitarianism was the doctrine of extreme instability of earth features, especially the forms and places of sea and land. Crust movements were irregularly oscillating to such a degree that in the course of geologic history sea and land frequently and completely changed places. Abundant evidence of this was supposed to be found in the unconformities so frequent in the stratified series. The tendency of that time was toward a belief in up-and-down movements, back-and-forth changes, without discoverable, law, rather than progressive onward movement. On first thought it might seem that such lawless movement was rather in keeping with catastrophism than uniformitarianism. But not so, for the movements are supposed to be very slow. Again, it might seem on first thought that gradual progressive change—in a word, evolution—would be peculiarly in accord with uniformitarian ideas. But again not so, because this doctrine was, above all, a revulsion from the idea of supernatural purpose or design or goal contained in catastrophism. Uniformitarianism strongly inclined toward purposelessness, because of its supposed identity with naturalism. Thus for a long time, and still with many geologists, the tendency is toward a belief in irregular movements without discoverable law, toward instability of even the greatest features of the earth—viz., sea basins and continental arches. Geology for them is a chronicle, not a life history.
The contrary movement of thought may be said to have commenced with Dana. Dana studied the earth as a unit, as in some sense an organism developing by forces within itself. The history of the earth is a life history moving progressively toward its completion. The forces originating oceanic basins and continental arches still continue to deepen the former and enlarge the latter. From this point of view, oceanic basins and continental arches must have always been substantially in the same places. Oscillations there have been at all times and in all places, but they affect mainly the outlines of these great features, though sometimes affecting also the interior of continents and mid-sea bottoms, but not sufficiently to change greatly their general form, much less to interchange their places.
Such is the doctrine of permanency of oceanic basins. It is undoubtedly a true doctrine, but must not be held in the rigid form characteristic of early thought. The forces originating oceanic basins still continue to deepen them and to increase the size and height of continents, but other forces are at work, some antagonizing (i.e., cutting down the continents and filling up the ocean beds), and still others determined by causes we little understand, by oscillations over wide areas, greatly modifying and often obscuring the effects of the basin-making movements. Here, then, we have two kinds of crust movements: the one fundamental and original, determining the greatest features of the earth and moving steadily onward in the same direction, ever increasing the features which it originates; the other apparently lawless, uncertain, oscillating over very wide areas, modifying and often obscuring the effects of the former. The old uniformitarians saw only the effects of the latter, because these are most conspicuous; the new evolutionists add also the former and show its more fundamental character, and thus introduce law and order into the previous chaos. The former is the one movement which runs ever in the same direction through all geologic time. The latter are the most common and conspicuous now and in all previous geologic time. The former underlies and conditions and unifies the history; the latter has practically determined all the details of the drama enacted here on the surface of the earth. Of the causes of the former we know something, though yet imperfectly. Of the causes of the latter we yet know absolutely nothing. We have not even begun to speculate profitably on the subject, and hence the apparent lawlessness of the phenomena. A fruitful theory of these must be left to the coming century.
Mountain Ranges.—If oceanic basins and continental domes constitute the greatest features of the earth's face, and are determined by the most fundamental movements of the crust, surely next in importance come great mountain ranges. These are the glory of our earth, the culminating points of scenic beauty and grandeur. But they are so only because they are also the culminating points, the theaters of greatest activity, of all geological forces, both igneous and aqueous—igneous in their formation, and aqueous both in the preparatory sedimentation and in the final erosive sculpturing into forms of beauty. A theory of mountain ranges therefore lies at the bases of all theoretical geology. To the pre-geologic mind mountains are the type of permanence and stability. We still speak metaphorically of the everlasting hills. But the first lesson taught by geology is that nothing is permanent; everything is subject to continuous change by a process of evolution. Mountains are no exception. We know them in embryo in the womb of the ocean. We know the date of their birth; we trace their growth, their maturity, their decay, their death; we even find in the folded structure of the rock, as it were, the fossil bones of extinct mountains. In a word, we are able now to trace the whole life history of mountains.
Mountains, therefore, have always been a subject of deepest interest both to the popular and the scientific mind—an interest intensified by the splendors of mountain scenery and the perils of mountain exploration. The study of mountains is therefore coeval with the study of geology. As early as the beginning of the present century Constant Prevost observed that most characteristic structure of mountains—viz., their folded strata—and inferred their formation by lateral pressure. All subsequent writers have assumed lateral pressure as somehow concerned in the formation of mountains. But that the whole height of mountains is due wholly to this cause was not generally admitted or even imagined until recently. It was universally supposed that mountains were lifted by volcanic forces from beneath, that the lifted strata broke along the top of the arch, and melted matter was forced through between the parted strata, pushing them back and folding them on each side. And hence the typical form of mountain ranges is that of a granite axis along the crest and folded strata on each flank. But attention has lately been drawn to the fact that some mountains, as, for example, the Appalachian, the Uintah, etc., consist of folded strata alone, without any granite axis. In such ranges it is plain that the whole height is due not to any force acting from below, but to a lateral pressure crushing and folding the strata, and a corresponding thickening and bulging of the same along the line of crushing. Then the idea was applied to all mountain ranges. So soon as the prodigious amount of erosion suffered by mountains, greater often than all that is left of them, was fully appreciated, it became evident that the granite axis so characteristic of mountains was not necessarily pushed up from beneath and protruded through the parted strata, but was in many cases only a sub-mountain core of igneous matter slowly cooled into granite and exposed by subsequent erosion greatest along the crest.
Next, attention was drawn to the enormous thickness of the strata involved in the folded structure of mountains. From this it became evident that the places of mountains before they were formed were marginal sea bottoms off the coasts of continents, and receiving the whole washings of the continents. Thus the steps of the process of mountain formation were (1) accumulation of sediments on offshore sea bottoms until by pari passu subsidence an enormous thickness was attained. This is the preparation. (2) A yielding along these lines to the increasing lateral pressure with folding and bulging of the strata along the line of yielding, until the mountain emerges above the ocean and is added to the land as a coast range. This is mountain birth. (3) As soon as it appears above the water it is attacked by erosive agents. At first the rising by continuance of the crushing and bulging is in excess of the erosion, and the mountain grows. This is mountain youth. (4) Then supply and waste balance one another, and we have mountain maturity. (5) Then the erosive waste exceeds the growth by up-bulging, and mountain decay begins. (6) Finally, the erosive forces triumph and the mountain is clean swept away, leaving only the complexly folded rocks of enormous thickness to mark the place of a former mountain. This is mountain death. Such briefly is the life history of a mountain range.
In all this we have said nothing about causes. In this connection there are two points of especial importance: (1) Why does the yielding to lateral pressure take place along lines of thick sediments? (2) What is the cause of the lateral pressure?
1. Cause of Yielding to Lateral Pressure along Lines of Thick Sediments.—The earth was once very hot. It is still very hot within, and still very slowly cooling. If sediments accumulate upon a sea bottom the interior heat will tend to rise so as to keep at the same distance from the surface. If the sediments are very thick, say five to ten miles, their lower parts will be invaded by a temperature of not less than 500° to 1,000° F. This temperature, in the presence of water (the included water of the sediments), would be sufficient to produce softening or even fusion of the sediments and of the sea floor on which they rest. This would establish a line of weakness, and therefore a line of yielding, crushing, folding, bulging, and thus a mountain range. In the first formation of a range, therefore, there would necessarily be a sub-mountain mass of fused or semifused matter which by the lateral crushing might be squeezed into cracks or fissures, forming dikes. But in any case the sub-mountain mass would cool into a granite core which by erosion may be exposed along the crest. The explanation seems to be satisfactory.
2. Cause of the Lateral Pressure.—No question in geology has been more discussed than this, and yet none is more difficult and the solution of which is more uncertain. But the most obvious and as yet the most probable view is that it is the result of the secular contraction of the earth which has gone on throughout its whole history, and is still going on.
It is admitted by all that in an earth cooling from primal incandescence there must come a time when the surface, having become substantially cool and receiving heat also from the sun, would no longer cool or contract, but, the interior being still incandesccntly hot, would continue to cool and contract. The interior, therefore, cooling and contracting faster than the exterior crust, the latter following down the ever-shrinking nucleus, would be thrust upon itself by a lateral or tangential pressure which would be simply irresistible. If the earth crust were a hundred times more rigid than it is, it still must yield to the enormous pressure. It does yield along its weakest lines with crushing, folding, bulging, and the formation of mountain ranges.
This is the barest outline of the so-called "contractional theory of mountain formation." Very many objections have been brought against it, some of them answerable and completely answered, but the complete answer to others must be left to the next century. Perhaps the greatest objection of all is the apparent insufficiency of the cause to produce the enormous amount of folding found not only in existing mountains but in the folded structure of rocks where mountains no longer exist. But it will be observed that I have thus far spoken only of contraction by loss of heat. Now, not only has this cause been greatly underestimated by objectors, but, as shown by Davison and especially by Van Hise, there are many other and even greater causes of contraction. It would be out of place to follow the discussion here. The subject is very complex, and not yet completely settled.
We have given, the barest outline of the history of mountain ranges and of the theory of their formation as worked out in the last third of the present century, and, I might add, chiefly by American geologists. So true is this, that by some it has been called the "American theory."
Oscillatory Movements of the Earth's Crust over Wide Areas.—We have already spoken of these as modifying the effect of the ocean-basin-making movements, and therefore now touch them very lightly. These differ from the movements producing oceanic basins on the one hand and mountain ranges on the other, by the fact that they are not continuously progressive in one direction, but oscillatory—now up, now down, in the same place. Again, they do not involve contraction of the whole earth, but probably are always more or less local and compensatory—i.e., rising in one place is compensated by down-sinking in some other place. Nevertheless, they often affect very wide areas—sometimes, indeed, of more than continental extent—as, for example, in the crust movements of the Quaternary period or ice age.
These are by far the most frequent and most conspicuous of all crust movements—not only now, but also in all geological times. If ocean-basin-forming movements are the underlying cause and condition of the evolution of the earth, these wide oscillations, by increasing and decreasing the size and height of continents and changing greatly their contours, have determined all the details of the drama enacted on the surface, and were the determining cause of the varying rates and directions of the evolution of the organic kingdom. These were the cause of the unconformities and the corresponding apparent wholesale changes in species so common in the rocky strata, and which gave rise to the doctrine of catastrophism of the early geologists. These also have so greatly modified the contours of the continents and their size by temporary increase or decrease that they have obscured the general law of the steady development of these, and therefore their substantial permanency.
Although the most important of all crust movements in determining the whole history of the earth, and especially of the organic kingdom, we shall dwell no further on them, because no progress has yet been made in their explanation. This, too, must be left to the workers of the twentieth century.
The Principle of Isostasy.—The principle of static equilibrium as applied to earth forms was first brought forward (as so many other valuable suggestions and anticipations in many departments of science) by the wonderfully fertile mind of Sir John Herschel, and used by him in the explanation of the sinking of river deltas under the increasing weight of accumulating sediments.[3] It was afterward applied to continental masses by Archbishop Pratt[4] and by the Royal Astronomer Professor Airy.[5] But for its wide application as a principle in geology, its clear definition, and its embodiment in an appropriate name, we are indebted to Major Dutton, United States Army.[6]
The principle may be briefly stated as follows: A globe so large as the earth, under the influence of its own gravity, must behave like a very stiffly viscous body—that is, the general form of the earth and its greatest inequalities must be in substantial static equilibrium. For example, the general form of the earth is oblate spheroid, because that is the only form of equilibrium of a rotating body. Rotation determines a distribution of gravity with latitude which brings about this form. With any other form the earth would be in a state of strain to which it must slowly yield, and finally relieve itself by becoming oblate. If the rotation stopped, the earth would accommodate itself to the new distribution of gravity and become spherical.
The same is true of the large inequalities of surface. Oceanic basins and continental arches must be in static equilibrium or they could not sustain themselves. In order to be in equilibrium the sub-oceanic material must be as much more dense than the continental and sub-continental material as the ocean bottoms are lower than the continental surfaces. Such static equilibrium, by difference of density, is completely explained by the mode of formation of oceanic basins already given.
So also plateaus and great mountain ranges are at least partly sustained by gravitative equilibrium, but partly also by earth rigidity. It is only the smaller inequalities, such as ridges, peaks, valleys, etc., that are sustained by earth rigidity alone.
These conclusions are not reached by physical reasonings alone, but are also confirmed by experimental investigations. For example, a plumb line on the plains of India is deflected indeed toward the Himalayas, as it ought to be, but much less than it would be if the mountain and sub-mountain mass were not less dense and the sub-oceanic material more dense than the average.[7] Again, gravitative determinations by pendulum oscillations, undertaken by the United States along a line from the Atlantic shore to Salt Lake City, show that the largest inequalities, such as the Appalachian bulge, the Mississippi-basin hollow, and the Rocky Mountain bulge, are in gravitative equilibrium—i.e., the mountain and sub-mountain material is as much lighter as the mountain region is higher than the Mississippi-basin region.
Now, so sensitive is the earth to changes of gravity that, given time enough, it responds to increase or decrease of pressure over large areas by corresponding subsidence or elevation. Hence, all places where great accumulations of sediment are going on are sinking under the increased weight, and, contrarily, all places where excessive erosion is going on, as, for example, on high plateaus and great mountain ranges, are rising by relief of pressure.
This principle of isostasy is undoubtedly a valuable one, which must be borne in mind in all our reasonings on crust movements, although its importance has been exaggerated by some enthusiastic supporters. Its greatest importance is not as a cause initiating crust movements or determining the features of the earth, but rather as conditioning and modifying the results produced by other causes. The idea belongs wholly to the latter half of the present century. Commencing about 1840, it has grown in clearness and importance to the present time.
[To be concluded.]
- ↑ In this article I have attempted to give only the development of geological thought.
- ↑ Hutton's Theory of the Earth.
- ↑ Philosophical Magazine, vol. ii, p. 212, 1837; Quarterly Journal of Geological Society, vol. ii, p. 548, 1837.
- ↑ Philosophical Magazine, vol. ix, p. 231, and vol. x, p. 240, 1865.
- ↑ Philosophical Trans., 1855, p. 101.
- ↑ Philosophical Society of Washington, 1892.
- ↑ Pratt, Philosophical Magazine; vol. ix, p. 231, 1855; vol. x, p. 340, 1855; vol. xvi, p. 401, 1858.