THE EARTH'S INSIDE

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 285, 30 June 1868, Page 3

THE EARTH'S INSIDE

A rather momentous inquiry has 'recently been made, in view of the multiplied and tremendous earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, with which Mother Earth is at present perturbed. Could it be possible, it is asked, for these wide spread subterranean commotions to open up the vast inner fires •to the sea .? and then would not the enormous amount, of steam suddenly developed—under inconceivable pressure, superheated to boot—blow the earth into fragments, after the fashion of a shrapnell shell.; or, at least, drive half of it away from the •other moiety, like the lip of a potato saucepan forgotten by the kitchenmaid. Certainly that would solve our various political difficulties and social problems in a very decided way, and be undoubtedly a magnificent cosmieal spectacle, viewed from the Moon ; while astronomers in Mars and Venus—if there be any there—would note the disappearance of a thousand million human creatures, along with .the orb on which they exist, as calmly -as we record the exit of the lost Pleiad. Something must be very much out of sorts with the " old brown earth," as the poet calls her. Prom hemisphere to hemisphere she is rumbling and heaving; from sea to shore she rolls huge weaves.; half her volcanic vents are in full blast; her harvests fail; frostand hotweather alternate like cold and hot fits of a terrestrial ague; and, altogeher, she appears as uneasy as the restless races of mankind upon her bosom. Vesuvius has been hard at it for two months, throwing up lava and fire, as if only just beginning; Manilla, the West Indies, Japan, and Texas have had their earthquakes ; Iceland fizzes and steams, and the Jebel Tor volcano, in the Red Sea, is in a state of suppressed fume. A traveller has given an account of a remarkable eruption in Nicaragua, close to the city of Leon, near the Pacific coast. He witnessed two craters in furious activity, one disgorging smoke and fire and redhot stones, to a height of 3000 feet, vertically ; the other, " blowing " horizontally, like a monstrous wastepipe. The stone shower from these two vents had destroyed the forests far and near, and covered the soil, within a radius of fifty miles, with black sand, four feet deep in some places. Of course, there is a good deal of comfort in the proverb, that '" It's a far cry to Lochawe." But, let us not be too complacent, there was a, most distinct shock of an earthquake felt, a few days ago, in Somersetshire —the earth swung and groaned, clocks stopped, bells rang, and a noise was heard " like shooting out of a thousand of bricks." Clearly, therefore, we are all in one boat at to this present condition of our venerable planet's inner regions ; and if anything like the majestic catastrophe hinted at could possibly befall her, it would matter extremely little to anybody whether he lived at Loon or Limehouse, at Naples or Notting Hill. The chemical theory of these phenomena most accepted is that of the late Dr Daubeny, who supposed that the metalloids which have the most appetite for oxygen—exist in vast quantities in the inner crust of the globe ;■ ;and that the sea or lake water gets at

them is decomposed, generates gases, fierce combustion, steam, and finally eruption. But what lets the water in ? The doctor thought the slow earthfurnaces would now and then do that; or, perhaps, fresh atmospheric and ethereal conditions, consequent on the .flight of the globe through space. Other theories present us with the terrific but sublime conceptions of this underworld. Most of them assume a core of immeasurable heat—of flames ten thousand times fiercer than any blast-furnace, in the bowels ot the planet. Granite, gneiss, and i-asalt, which outside are so very solid, roll, they say, and surge, aud splash it white hot waves in this inward maw—the primeval Hades ; and when an earthquake happens, it is the crust of the earth undulating upon the swell of these billows, as seaweed undulates on the top of the ocean. One would like to know how thick the crust is which keeps us from closer acquaintance with such a state of things.