Accorp1ne to the most credible accounts of the oceans which spread over the greater portion of our globe, they are a part of the primeval waste of waters which existed everywhere before the continents appeared. The sea is older than the land as the most modern science now tells us. To the east of Japan lies a deep hollow, and beyond that is the ordinary Pacific Ocean bed which probably resembles that of the Atlantic in being over a portion of it a wide plain, Volcanoes mark the ocean barrier both on the east coast of Asia and the west coast of America, The line of volcanoes may be traced from Java to the Aleutian Islands and from Alaska to Cape Horn. The continents, mountains and archipelagos have not been raised without the action of fire and other physical forces. Japan, which now suffers severely every twenty years from earthquakes, owes its origin doubtless to the same force which now appears occasionally as a devastating scourge. Japan is in the outer line of volcanoes which belong to eastern Asia, The Pacific bottom has never been raised as the Atlantic has never been raised. There is a connection between mountain chains and volcanoes and continents indicating that subterranean force is in its nature volcanic. This is evident, for it is borne witness to by the earthquakes and volcanoes of Japan, the hot sulphur springs of Formosa, and the earthquakes and volcanoes of Java. 'I'hese lands are just upon the outer line which marks the continent of Asia, They indicate that the same mighty forces, which lifted the vast mass of Asiatic lands through long ages to its present position, still lie slumbering underground ready for future work when the law of progress under the control of the creating Governor calls for their activity.
We are getting to know much more than we did of the earth on which we live. Living investigators are of the opinion that there is no liquid centre. The terrestrial globe is densely solid at the centre and the fiery forces which break out in the crust are in fact subject to the ordinary laws of heat, density, and pressure and act uniformly in accordance with those laws. Any rock a long way below the surface of the earth will melt, if it melts at all, with great difficulty, because it is under a very high pressure. A rock on the surface has only the ordinary atmospheric pressure upon it and requires to melt it just the force found sufficient by glass-makers. Iron and ice and some other substances expand when cooling and contract when melting; glass and slag expand in melting and contract in cooling. Just as hydraulic sure has immense power because water refuses fo shrink, so the differences in the nature of rocks lead them to expand or contract according to mutually divergent laws, so that they may under great pressure exert enormous power in upward direction as well as downward. We know that great increase of temperature occurs in many places when excavations are made deep down into the earth, often amounting to one degree of Fahrenheit for every sixty-four feet. Two miles down the thermometer would at this rate show 165°. Twenty miles down the temperature would be 1,650". But the enormous pressure prevents the rocks from melting. After all that may be said about the heat far underground it is only comparatively near the surface that the rocks melt under the temperature to which they are exposed and where all the conditions are favourable. Earthquakes and vol-conic eruptions are crust phenomena, and are not observable except in a limited locality on the surface. Ihe sea conveys the agitation caused by earthquakes for many miles, but there is in the middle of our globe no liquid sea of molten rock to convey vibrations from one side of the world to the other. The absence of tides proves the nonexistence of such an imaginary sea. If there were such tides the physicists would have observed them. There is tremendously high pressure everywhere two miles below the surface of the earth and this may be relieved by fissures. When that relief comes the rocks may melt in the immediate neighbourhood. 'I'here will then be a store of lava ready for an eruption. If a great crack is made in the superincumbent rocks, water will flow down which will become steam immediately. Thus the most recent theory on the subject directs attention to the cracking of the crust as the occasion of the outflow of lava and of the steam of volcanoes and of geysers. The fissures caused occur usually along lines of enormous length. Ihe coast of China lies near the greatest of the volcanic bands which stretch round a large part of the globe. It is a band which includes more than half of the world's volcanoes. It is very irregular in shape and gives off many branches. The focus of the volcanicaction lies between Borneo and New Guinea. One branch starting from this centre extends through the Philippine Islands, Japan, the Kurile Islands and Kamschatka. It gives off an outlier to the east which passes through the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. Another branch proceeds to the southeast through New Britain, the New Hebrides and New Zealand. An eastern branch goes through the Navigator Islands and Friendly Islands and a western branch through Java, Sumatra and the island groups of the Bay of Bengal as far as to the coast of Burma, Along this mighty band stretching from the Arctic to the Antarctic circle there are at present about 150 volcanoes in occasional activity and several hundred cone-shaped mountains which after a period of volcanic disturbance of some unknown date sank again to slumber.
The Chinese earthquakes are undoubtedly to be affiliated to this great volcanic band. About century and a
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