Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/54

42 he would notice that those bounding the North Atlantic are in general of great age, some belonging to the Laurentian system. On the other hand, he would see that many of the mountain-ranges along the Pacific are comparatively new, and that modern igneous action occurs in connection with them. Thus he might be led to believe that the Atlantic, though comparatively narrow, is an older feature of the earth's surface, while the Pacific belongs to more modern times. But he would note in connection with this that the oldest rocks of the great continental masses are mostly toward their northern ends, and that the borders of the northern ring of land and certain ridges extending southward from it constitute the most ancient and permanent elevations of the earth's crust, though now greatly surpassed by mountains of more recent age nearer the equator.

Before leaving this general survey we may make one further remark. An observer looking at the earth from without would notice that the margins of the Atlantic and the main lines of direction of its mountain-chains are northeast and southwest, and northwest and south-east, as if some early causes had determined the occurrence of elevations along great circles of the earth's surface tangent to the polar circles. We are invited by the preceding general glance at the surface of the earth to ask certain questions respecting the Atlantic: 1. What has at first determined its position and form? 2. What changes has it experienced in the lapse of geological time? 3, What relations have these changes borne to the development of life on the land and in the water? 4. What is its probable future? Before attempting to answer these questions, which I shall not take up formally in succession, but rather in connection with each other, it is necessary to state as briefly as possible certain general conclusions respecting the interior of the earth. It is popularly supposed that we know nothing of this beyond a superficial crust perhaps averaging fifty thousand to one hundred thousand feet in thickness. It is true we have no means of exploration in the earth's interior, but the conjoined labors of physicists and geologists have now proceeded sufficiently far to throw much inferential light on the subject, and to enable us to make some general affirmations with certainty; and these it is the more necessary to state distinctly, since they are often treated as mere subjects of speculation and fruitless discussion:

1. Since the dawn of geological science, it has been evident that the crust on which we live must be supported on a plastic or partially liquid mass of heated rock, approximately uniform in quality under the whole of its area. This is a legitimate conclusion from the wide distribution of volcanic phenomena, and from the fact that the ejections of volcanoes, while locally of various kinds, are similar in every part of the world. It led to the old idea of a fluid interior of the earth, but this is now generally abandoned, and this interior heated and plastic layer is regarded as merely an under-crust.