Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/70

60 Obviously the most general trait is the greater amount of change wrought on the outer surface than in the inner mass. In so far as the matters of which the medium is composed come into play, the unavoidable implication is that they act more on the parts directly exposed to them than on the parts sheltered from them. And in so far as the forces pervading the medium come into play, it is manifest that, excluding gravity, which affects outer and inner parts indiscriminately, the outer parts have to bear far larger shares of their actions. If it is a question of heat, then the exterior must lose it or gain it faster than the interior; and in a medium which is now warmer and now colder, the two must habitually differ in temperature to some extent—at least where the size is considerable. If it is a question of light, then in all but absolutely transparent masses, the outer parts must undergo more of any change producible by it than the inner parts—supposing other things equal; by which I mean, supposing the case is not complicated by any such convexities of the outer surface as produce internal concentrations of rays. Hence then, speaking generally, the necessity is that the primary and almost universal effect of the converse between the body and its medium, is to differentiate its outside from its inside. I say almost universal, because where the body is both mechanically and chemically stable, like, for instance, a quartz crystal, the medium may fail to work either inner or outer change.

Of illustrations among inorganic bodies, a convenient one is supplied by an old cannon-ball that has been long lying exposed. A coating of rust, formed of flakes within flakes, incloses it; and this thickens year by year, until, perhaps, it reaches a stage at which its exterior loses as much by rain and wind as its interior gains by further oxidation of the iron. Most mineral masses—pebbles, boulders, rocks—if they show any effect of the environment at all, show it only by that disintegration of surface which follows the freezing of absorbed water: an effect which, though mechanical rather than chemical, equally illustrates the general truth. Occasionally a "rocking-stone" is thus produced. There are formed successive layers relatively friable in texture, each of which, thickest at the most exposed parts, and being presently lost by weathering, leaves the contained mass in a shape more rounded than before; until, resting on its convex under-surface, it is easily moved. But of all instances perhaps the most remarkable is one to be seen on the west bank of the Nile at Philæ, where a ridge of granite 100 feet high, has had its outer parts reduced in course of time to a collection of boulder-shaped masses, varying from say a yard in diameter to eight or ten feet, each one of which shows in progress an exfoliation of successively-formed shells of decomposed granite: most of the masses having portions of such shells partially detached.

If, now, inorganic masses, relatively so stable in composition, thus have their outer parts differentiated from their inner parts, what must