Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/681

EPIGENE ACTION] picked out by the weather, minute and frail fossils which are wholly invisible on a freshly broken surface of the stone. Many rocks weather with a thick crust, or even decay inwards for many feet or yards. Basalt, for example, often shows a yellowish-brown ferruginous layer on its surface, formed by the conversion of its felspar into kaolin, and the removal of its calcium silicate as carbonate, by the hydration of its olivine and augite and their conversion into serpentine, or some other hydrous magnesian silicate, and by the conversion of its magnetite into limonite. Granite sometimes shows in a most remarkable way the distance to which weathering can reach. It may occasionally be dug into for a depth of 20 or 30 ft., the quartz crystals and veins retaining their original positions, while the felspar is completely kaolinized. It is to the endlessly varied effects of weathering that the abundant fantastic shapes assumed by crags and other rocky masses are due. Most varieties of rock have their own characteristic modes of weathering, whereby they may be recognized even from a distance. To some of these features reference will be made in Part VIII.

The mechanical action of rain, which is intimately bound up with its chemical action, consists in washing off the fine superficial particles of rocks which have been corroded and loosened by the process of weathering, and in thus laying open fresh portions to the same influences of decay. The detritus so removed is partly carried down into the soil which is thereby enriched, partly held in suspension in the little runnels into which the rain-drops gather as they begin to flow over the land, partly pushed downwards along the surface of sloping ground. A good deal of it finds its way into the nearest brooks and rivers, which are consequently made muddy by heavy rain.

It is natural that a casual consideration of the subject should lead to an impression that, though the general result of the fall of rain upon a land-surface must lead to some amount of disintegration and lowering of that surface, the process must be so slow and slight as hardly to be considered of much importance among geological operations. But further attention will show such an impression to be singularly erroneous. It loses sight of the fact that a change which may be hardly appreciable within a human lifetime, or even within the comparatively brief span of geological time embraced in the compass of human history, may nevertheless become gigantic in its results in the course of immensely protracted periods. An instructive lesson in the erosive action of rain may be found in the pitted and channelled surface of ground lying under the drip of the eaves of a cottage. The fragments of stone and pebbles of gravel that form part of the soil can there be seen sticking out of the ground, because being hard they resist the impetus of the falling drops, protecting for a time the earth beneath them, while that which surrounded and covered them is washed away. From this familiar illustration the observer may advance through every stage in the disappearance of material which once covered the surface, until he comes to examples where once continuous and thick sheets of solid rock have been reduced to a few fragments or have been entirely removed. Since the whole land surface over which rain falls is exposed to this waste, the superficial covering of decayed rock or soil, as Hutton insisted, is constantly, though imperceptibly, travelling outward and downward to the sea. In this process of transport rain is an important carrying agent, while at the same time it serves to connect the work of the other disintegrating forces, and to make it conducive to the general degradation of the land. Though this decay is general and constant, it is obviously not uniform. In some places where, from the nature of the rock, from the flatness of the ground, or from other causes, rain works under great difficulties, the rate of waste may be extremely slow. In other places it may be rapid enough to be appreciable from year to year. A survey of this department of geological activity shows how unequal wasting by rain, combined with the operations of brooks and rivers, has produced the details of the present relief of the land, those tracts where the destruction has been greatest forming hollows and valleys, others, where it has been less, rising into ridges and hills (Part VIII.).

Rain-action is not merely destructive, but is accompanied with reproductive effects, chief of which is the formation of soil. In favourable situations it has gathered together accumulations of loam and earth from neighbouring higher ground, such as the “brick-earth,” “head,” and “rain-wash” of the south of England—earthy deposits, sometimes full of angular stones, derived from the subaerial waste of the rocks of the neighbourhood.

2. Underground Water.—Of the rain which falls upon the land one portion flows off into brooks and rivers by which the water is conducted back to the ocean; the larger part, however, sinks into the ground and disappears. It is this latter part which has now to be considered. Over and above the proportion of the rainfall which is absorbed by living vegetation and by the soil, there is a continual filtering down of the water from the surface into the rocks that lie below, where it partly lodges in pores and interstices, and partly finds its way into subterranean joints and fissures, in which it performs an underground circulation, and ultimately issues once more at the surface in the form of (q.v.). In the course of this circulation the water performs an important geological task. Not only carrying down with it the substances which the rain has abstracted from the air, but obtaining more acids and organic matter from the soil, it is enabled to effect chemical changes in the rocks underneath, and especially to dissolve limestone and other calcareous formations. So considerable is the extent of this solution in some places that the springs which come to the surface, and begin there to evaporate and lose some of their carbonic acid, contain more dissolved lime than they can hold. They consequently deposit it in the form of calcareous tuff or (q.v.). Other subterranean waters issue with a large proportion of iron-salts in solution which form deposits of ochre. The various mineral springs so largely made use of for the mitigation or cure of diseases owe their properties to the various salts which they have dissolved out of rocks underground. As the result of prolonged subterranean solution in limestone districts, passages and (q.v.), sometimes of great width and length, are formed. When these lie near the surface their roofs sometimes fall in and engulf brooks and rivers, which then flow for some way underground until the tunnels conduct them back again to daylight on some lower ground.

Besides its chemical activity water exerts among subterranean rocks a mechanical influence which leads to important changes in the topography of the surface. In removing the mineral matter, either in solution or as fine sediment, it sometimes loosens the support of overlying masses of rock which may ultimately give way on sloping ground, and rush down the declivities in the form of landslips. These destructive effects are specially frequent on the sides of valleys in mountainous countries and on lines of sea-cliff.

3. Brooks and Rivers.—As geological agents the running waters on the face of the land play an important part in epigene changes. Like rain and springs they have both a chemical and a mechanical action. The latter receives most attention, as it undoubtedly is the more important; but the former ought not to be omitted in any survey of the general waste of the earth’s surface. The water of rivers must possess the powers of a chemical solvent like rain and springs, though its actual work in this respect can be less easily measured, seeing that river water is directly derived from rain and springs, and necessarily contains in solution mineral substances supplied to it by them and not by its own operation. Nevertheless, it is sometimes easy to prove that streams dissolve chemically the rocks of their channels. Thus, in limestone districts the base of the cliffs of river ravines may be found eaten away into tunnels, arches, and overhanging projections, presenting in their smooth surfaces a great contrast to the angular jointed faces of the same rock, where now exposed to the influence only of the weather on the higher parts of the cliff.

The mechanical action of rivers consists (a) in transporting mud, sand, gravel and blocks of stone from higher to lower levels; (b) in using these loose materials to widen and deepen their channels by erosion; (c) in depositing their load of detritus wherever possible and thus to make new geological formations.

(a) Transporting Power.—River-water is distinguished from that of springs by being less transparent, because it contains more or less mineral matter in suspension, derived mainly from what is washed down by rain, or carried in by brooks, but partly also from the abrasion of the water-channels by the erosive action of the rivers themselves. The progress of this burden of detritus may be instructively followed from the mountain-tributaries of a river down to the mouth of the main stream. In the high grounds the water-courses may be observed to be choked with large fragments of rock disengaged from the cliffs and crags on either side. Traced downwards the blocks are seen to become gradually smaller and more rounded. They are ground against each other, and upon the rocky sides and bottom of the channel, getting more and more reduced as they descend, and at the same time abrading the rocks over or against which they are driven. Hence a great deal of débris is produced, and is swept along by the onward and downward movement of the water. The finer portions, such as mud and fine sand, are carried in suspension, and impart the characteristic turbidity to river-water; the coarser sand and gravel are driven along the river-bottom. The proportion of suspended mineral matter has been ascertained with more or less precision for a number of rivers. As an illustrative example of a river draining a vast area with different climates, forms of surface and geological structure the Mississippi may be cited. The average proportion of sediment in its water was ascertained by Humphreys and Abbot to be by weight or by volume. These engineers found that, in addition to this suspended material, coarse detritus is constantly being pushed forward along the bed of the river into the Gulf of Mexico, to an amount which they estimated at about 750,000,000 cubic ft. of sand, earth and gravel; they concluded that the Mississippi carries into the gulf every year an amount of mechanically transported sediment sufficient to make a prism one square mile in area and 268 ft. in height.

(b) Excavating Power.—It is by means of the sand, gravel and stones which they drive against the sides and bottoms of their channels that streams have hollowed out the beds in which they flow. Not only is the coarse detritus reduced in size by the friction of the stones against each other, but, at the same time, these materials abrade the rocks against which they are driven by the current. Where, owing to the shape of the bottom of the channel, the stones are caught in eddies, and are kept whirling round there, they become more and more worn down themselves, and at the same time scour out basin-shaped cavities, or “pot-holes,” in the solid rock below.