Principles of Geology Part 45

It cannot be objected that hydrostatic pressure would prevent a tendency to equalization of temperature; for, as far as observations have yet been made, it is found that the waters of deep lakes and seas are governed by the same laws as a shallow pool; and no experiments indicate that solids resist fusion under high pressure. The arguments, indeed, now controverted, always proceed on the admission that the internal nucleus is in a state of fusion.

It may be said that we may stand upon the hardened surface of a lava-current while it is still in motion,--nay, may descend into the crater of Vesuvius after an eruption, and stand on the scoriae while every crevice shows that the rock is red-hot two or three feet below us; and at a somewhat greater depth, all is, perhaps, in a state of fusion.

May not, then, a much more intense heat be expected at the depth of several hundred yards, or miles? The answer is,--that until a great quant.i.ty of heat has been given off, either by the emission of lava, or in a latent form by the evolution of steam and gas, the melted matter continues to boil in the crater of a volcano. But ebullition ceases when there is no longer a sufficient supply of heat from below, and then a crust of lava may form on the top, and showers of scoriae may then descend upon the surface, and remain unmelted. If the internal heat be raised again, ebullition will recommence, and soon fuse the superficial crust. So in the case of the moving current, we may safely a.s.sume that no part of the liquid beneath the hardened surface is much above the temperature sufficient to retain it in a state of fluidity.

It may a.s.sist us in forming a clearer view of the doctrine now controverted, if we consider what would happen were a globe of h.o.m.ogeneous composition placed under circ.u.mstances a.n.a.logous, in regard to the distribution of heat, to those above stated. If the whole planet, for example, were composed of water covered with a spheroidal crust of ice fifty miles thick, and with an interior ocean having a central heat about two hundred times that of the melting point of ice, or 6400 F.; and if, between the surface and the centre, there was every intermediate degree of temperature between that of melting ice and that of the central nucleus--could such a state of things last for a moment? If it must be conceded, in this case, that the whole spheroid would be instantly in a state of violent ebullition, that the ice (instead of being strengthened annually by new internal layers) would soon melt, and form part of an atmosphere of steam--on what principle can it he maintained that a.n.a.logous effects would not follow, in regard to the earth, under the conditions a.s.sumed in the theory of central heat?[754]

M. Cordier admits that there must be tides in the internal melted ocean; but their effect, he says, has become feeble, although originally, when the fluidity of the globe was perfect, "the rise and fall of these ancient land tides could not have been less than from thirteen to sixteen feet." Now, granting for a moment, that these tides have become so feeble as to be incapable of causing the fissured sh.e.l.l of the earth to be first uplifted and then depressed every six hours, still may we not ask whether, during eruptions, the lava, which is supposed to communicate with a great central ocean, would not rise and fall sensibly in a crater such as Stromboli, where there is always melted matter in a state of ebullition?

_Whether chemical changes may produce volcanic heat._--Having now explained the reasons which have induced me to question the hypothesis of central heat as the primary source of volcanic action, it remains to consider what has been termed the chemical theory of volcanoes. It is well known that many, perhaps all, of the substances of which the earth is composed are continually undergoing chemical changes. To what depth these processes may be continued downwards must, in a great degree, be matter of conjecture; but there is no reason to suspect that, if we could descend to a great distance from the surface, we should find elementary substances differing essentially from those with which we are acquainted.

All the solid, fluid, and gaseous bodies known to us consist of a very small number of these elementary substances variously combined: the total number of elements at present known is less than sixty; and not half of these enter into the composition of the more abundant inorganic productions. Some portions of such compounds are daily undergoing decomposition, and their const.i.tuent parts being set free are pa.s.sing into new combinations. These processes are by no means confined to minerals at the earth's surface, and are very often accompanied by the evolution of heat, which is intense in proportion to the rapidity of the combinations. At the same time there is a development of electricity.

The spontaneous combustion of beds of bituminous shale, and of refuse coal thrown out of mines, is generally due to the decomposition of pyrites; and it is the contact of air and water which brings about the change. Heat results from the oxidation of the sulphur and iron, though on what principle heat is generated, when two or more bodies having a strong affinity for each other unite suddenly, is wholly unexplained.

_Electricity a source of volcanic heat._--It has already been stated, that chemical changes develop electricity; which, in its turn, becomes a powerful disturbing cause. As a chemical agent, says Davy, its silent and slow operation in the economy of nature is much more important than its grand and impressive operation in lightning and thunder. It may be considered, not only as directly producing an infinite variety of changes, but as influencing almost all which take place; it would seem, indeed, that chemical attraction itself is only a peculiar form of the exhibition of electrical attraction.[755]

Now that it has been demonstrated that magnetism and electricity are always a.s.sociated, and are perhaps only different conditions of the same power, the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism have become of no ordinary interest to the geologist. Soon after the first great discoveries of Oersted in electro-magnetism, Ampere suggested that all the phenomena of the magnetic needle might be explained by supposing currents of electricity to circulate constantly in the sh.e.l.l of the globe in directions parallel to the magnetic equator. This theory has acquired additional consistency the farther we have advanced in science; and according to the experiments of Mr. Fox, on the electro-magnetic properties of metalliferous veins, some trace of electric currents seems to have been detected in the interior of the earth.[756]

Some philosophers ascribe these currents to the chemical action going on in the superficial parts of the globe to which air and water have the readiest access; while others refer them, in part at least, to thermo-electricity excited by the solar rays on the surface of the earth during its rotation; successive parts of the atmosphere, land, and sea being exposed to the influence of the sun, and then cooled again in the night. That this idea is not a mere speculation, is proved by the correspondence of the diurnal variations of the magnet with the apparent motion of the sun; and by the greater amount of variation in summer than in winter, and during the day than in the night. M. de la Rive, although conceding that such minor variations of the needle may be due to thermo-electricity, contends that the general phenomena of terrestrial magnetism must be attributed to currents far more intense; which, though liable to secular fluctuations, act with much greater constancy and regularity than the causes which produce the diurnal variations.[757]

The remark seems just; yet it is difficult to a.s.sign limits to the acc.u.mulated influence even of a very feeble force constantly acting on the whole surface of the earth. This subject, however, must evidently remain obscure, until we become acquainted with the causes which give a determinate direction to the supposed electric currents. Already the experiments of Faraday on the rotation of magnets have led him to speculate on the manner in which the earth, when once it had become magnetic, might produce electric currents within itself, in consequence of its diurnal rotation.[758] We have seen also in a former chapter (p.

129) that the recent observations of Schwabe, 1852, have led Col. Sabine to the discovery of a connection between certain periodical changes, which take place in the spots on the sun, and a certain cycle of variations in terrestrial magnetism. These seem to point to the existence of a solar magnetic period, and suggest the idea of the sun's magnetism exerting an influence on the ma.s.s of our planet.

In regard to thermo-electricity, I may remark, that it may be generated by great inequalities of temperature, arising from a partial distribution of volcanic heat. Wherever, for example, ma.s.ses of rock occur of great horizontal extent, and of considerable depth, which are at one point in a state of fusion (as beneath some active volcano); at another, red-hot; and at a third, comparatively cold--strong thermo-electric action may be excited.

Some, perhaps, may object, that this is reasoning in a circle; first to introduce electricity as one of the primary causes of volcanic heat, and then to derive the same heat from thermo-electric currents. But there must, in truth, be much reciprocal action between the agents now under consideration; and it is very difficult to decide which should be regarded as the prime mover, or to see where the train of changes, once begun, would terminate. Whether subterranean electric currents if once excited might sometimes possess the decomposing power of the voltaic pile, is a question not perhaps easily answered in the present state of science; but such a power, if developed, would at once supply us with a never-failing source of chemical action from which volcanic heat might be derived.

_Recapitulation._--Before entering, in the next chapter, still farther into the inquiry, how far the phenomena of volcanoes and earthquakes accord with the hypothesis of a continued generation of heat by chemical action, it may be desirable to recapitulate, in a few words, the conclusions already obtained.

1st. The primary causes of the volcano and the earthquake are, to a great extent, the same, and must be connected with the pa.s.sage of heat from the interior to the surface.

2dly. This heat has been referred, by many, to a supposed state of igneous fusion of the central parts of the planet when it was first created, of which a part still remains in the interior, but is always diminis.h.i.+ng in intensity.

3dly. The spheroidal figure of the earth, adduced in support of this theory, does not of necessity imply a universal and simultaneous fluidity, in the beginning; for supposing the original figure of our planet had been strictly spherical--which, however, is a gratuitous a.s.sumption, resting on no established a.n.a.logy--still the statical figure must have been a.s.sumed, if sufficient time be allowed, by the gradual operation of the centrifugal force, acting on the materials brought successively within its action by aqueous and igneous causes.

4thly. It appears, from experiment, that the heat in mines increases progressively with their depth; and if the ratio of increase be continued uniformly from the surface to the interior, the whole globe, with the exception of a small external sh.e.l.l, must be fluid, and the central parts must have a temperature many times higher than that of melted iron.

5thly. But the theory adopted by M. Cordier and others, which maintains the actual existence of such a state of things, seems wholly inconsistent with the laws which regulate the circulation of heat through fluid bodies. For, if the central heat were as intense as is represented, there must be a circulation of currents, tending to equalize the temperature of the resulting fluids, and the solid crust itself would be melted.

6thly. Instead of an original central heat, we may, perhaps, refer the heat of the interior to chemical changes constantly going on in the earth's crust; for the general effect of chemical combination is the evolution of heat and electricity, which in their turn become sources of new chemical changes.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

CAUSES OF EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES--_continued_.

Review of the proofs of internal heat--Theory of an unoxidated metallic nucleus--Whether the decomposition of water may be a source of volcanic heat--Geysers of Iceland--Causes of earthquakes--Wavelike motion--Expansive power of liquid gases--Connection between the state of the atmosphere and earthquakes--Permanent upheaval and subsidence of land--Expansion of rocks by heat--The balance of dry land how preserved--Subsidence in excess--Conclusion.

When we reflect that the largest mountains are but insignificant protuberances upon the surface of the earth, and that these mountains are nevertheless composed of different parts which have been formed in succession, we may well feel surprise that the central fluidity of the planet should have been called in to account for volcanic phenomena. To suppose the entire globe to be in a state of igneous fusion, with the exception of a solid sh.e.l.l, not more than from thirty to one hundred miles thick, and to imagine that the central heat of this fluid spheroid exceeds by more than two hundred times that of liquid lava, is to introduce a force altogether disproportionate to the effects which it is required to explain.

The ordinary repose of the surface implies, on the contrary, an inertness in the internal ma.s.s which is truly wonderful. When we consider the combustible nature of the elements of the earth, so far as they are known to us,--the facility with which their compounds may be decomposed and made to enter into new combinations,--the quant.i.ty of heat which they evolve during these processes; when we recollect the expansive power of steam, and that water itself is composed of two gases which, by their union, produce intense heat; when we call to mind the number of explosive and detonating compounds which have been already discovered, we may be allowed to share the astonishment of Pliny, that a single day should pa.s.s without a general conflagration:--"Excedit profect omnia miracula, ullum diem fuisse quo non cuncta conflagrarent."[759]

The signs of internal heat observable on the surface of the earth do not necessarily indicate the permanent existence of subterranean heated ma.s.ses, whether fluid or solid, by any means so vast as our continents and seas; yet how insignificant would these appear if distributed through an external sh.e.l.l of the globe one or two hundred miles in depth! The princ.i.p.al facts in proof of the acc.u.mulation of heat below the surface may be summed up in a few words. Several volcanoes are constantly in eruption, as Stromboli and Nicaragua; others are known to have been active for periods of 60, or even 150 years, as those of Sangay in Quito, Popocatepetl in Mexico, and the volcano of the Isle of Bourbon. Many craters emit hot vapors in the intervals between eruptions, and solfataras evolve incessantly the same gases as volcanoes. Steam of high temperature has continued for more than twenty centuries to issue from the "stufas," as the Italians call them; thermal springs abound not only in regions of earthquakes, but are found in almost all countries, however distant from active vents; and, lastly, the temperature in the mines of various parts of the world is found to increase in proportion as we descend.

The diagram (fig. 93) in the next page, may convey some idea of the proportion which our continents and the ocean bear to the radius of the earth.[760] If all the land were about as high as the Himalaya mountains, and the ocean everywhere as deep as the Pacific, the whole of both might be contained within a s.p.a.ce expressed by the thickness of the line _a b_; and ma.s.ses of nearly equal volume might be placed in the s.p.a.ce marked by the line _c d_, in the interior. Seas of lava, therefore, of the size of the Mediterranean, or even of the Atlantic, would be as nothing if distributed through such an outer sh.e.l.l of the globe as is represented by the shaded portion of the figure _a b c d_.

If throughout that s.p.a.ce we imagine electro-chemical causes to be continually in operation, even of very feeble power, they might give rise to heat which, if acc.u.mulated at certain points, might melt or render red-hot entire mountains, or sustain the temperature of stufas and hot springs for ages.

_Theory of an unoxidated metallic nucleus._--When Sir H. Davy first discovered the metallic basis of the earths and alkalies, he threw out the idea that those metals might abound in an unoxidized state in the subterranean regions to which water must occasionally penetrate.

Whenever this happened, gaseous matter would be set free, the metals would combine with the oxygen of the water, and sufficient heat might be evolved to melt the surrounding rocks. This hypothesis, although afterwards abandoned by its author, was at first very favorably received both by the chemist and the geologist: for silica, alumina, lime, soda, and oxide of iron,--substances of which lavas are princ.i.p.ally composed,--would all result from the contact of the inflammable metals alluded to with water. But whence this abundant store of unsaturated metals in the interior? It was a.s.sumed that, in the beginning of things, the nucleus of the earth was mainly composed of inflammable metals, and that oxidation went on with intense energy at first; till at length, when a superficial crust of oxides had been formed, the chemical action became more and more languid.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 93.

Centre of the earth.]

This speculation, like all others respecting the primitive state of the earth's nucleus, rests unavoidably on arbitrary a.s.sumptions. But we may fairly inquire whether any existing causes may have the power of deoxidating the earthy and alkaline compounds formed from time to time by the action of water upon the metallic bases. If so, and if the original crust or nucleus of the planet contained distributed through it here and there some partial stores of pota.s.sium, sodium, and other metallic bases, these might be oxidated and again deoxidated, so as to sustain for ages a permanent chemical action. Yet even then we should be unable to explain why such a continuous circle of operations, after having been kept up for thousands of years in one district, should entirely cease, and why another region, which had enjoyed a respite from volcanic action for one or many geological periods, should become a theatre for the development of subterranean heat.

It is well known to chemists, that the metallization of oxides, the most difficult to reduce, may be effected by hydrogen brought into contact with them at a red heat; and it is more than probable that the production of pota.s.sium itself, in the common gun-barrel process, is due to the power of nascent hydrogen derived from the water which the hydrated oxide contains. According to the recent experiments, also, of Faraday, it would appear that every case of metallic reduction by voltaic agency, from saline solutions, in which water is present, is due to the secondary action of hydrogen upon the oxide; both of these being determined to the negative pole and then reacting upon one another.

It is admitted that intense heat would be produced by the occasional contact of water with the metallic bases; and it is certain that, during the process of saturation, vast volumes of hydrogen must be evolved. The hydrogen, thus generated, might permeate the crust of the earth in different directions, and become stored up for ages in fissures and caverns, sometimes in a liquid form, under the necessary pressure.

Whenever, at any subsequent period, in consequence of the changes effected by earthquakes in the sh.e.l.l of the earth, this gas happened to come in contact with metallic oxides at a high temperature, the reduction of these oxides might be the result.

No theory seems at first more startling than that which represents water as affording an inexhaustible supply of fuel to the volcanic fires; yet is it by no means visionary. It is a fact that must not be overlooked, that while a great number of volcanoes are entirely submarine, the remainder occur for the most part in islands or maritime tracts. There are a few exceptions; but some of these, observes Dr. Daubeny, are near inland salt lakes, as in Central Tartary; while others form part of a train of volcanoes, the extremities of which are near the sea.

Sir H. Davy suggested that, when the sea is distant, as in the case of some of the South American volcanoes, they may still be supplied with water from subterranean lakes; since, according to Humboldt, large quant.i.ties of fish are often thrown out during eruptions.[761] Mr. Dana also, in his valuable and original observations on the volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands, reminds us of the prodigious volume of atmospheric water which must be absorbed into the interior of such large and lofty domes, composed as they are entirely of porous lava. To this source alone he refers the production of the steam by which the melted matter is propelled upwards, even to the summit of cones three miles in height.[762]

When treating of springs and overflowing wells, I have stated that porous rocks are percolated by fresh water to great depths, and that sea-water probably penetrates in the same manner through the rocks which form the bed of the ocean. But, besides this universal circulation in regions not far from the surface, it must be supposed that, wherever earthquakes prevail, much larger bodies of water will be forced by the pressure of the ocean into fissures at great depths, or swallowed up in chasms; in the same manner as on the land, towns, houses, cattle, and trees are sometimes engulfed. It will be remembered, that these chasms often close again after houses have fallen into them; and for the same reason, when water has penetrated to a ma.s.s of melted lava, the steam into which it is converted may often rush out at a different aperture from that by which the water entered.

The gases, it is said, exhaled from volcanoes, together with steam, are such as would result from the decomposition of salt water, and the fumes which escape from the Vesuvian lava have been observed to deposit common salt.[763] The emission of free muriatic acid gas in great quant.i.ties is also thought by many to favor the theory of the decomposition of the salt contained in sea-water. It has been objected, however, that M.

Boussingault did not meet with this gas in his examination of the elastic fluids evolved from the volcanoes of equatorial America; which only give out aqueous vapor (in very large quant.i.ty), carbonic acid gas, sulphurous acid gas, and sometimes fumes of sulphur.[764] In reply, Dr.

Daubeny has remarked, that muriatic acid may have ceased to be disengaged, because the volcanic action has become languid in equatorial America, and sea-water may no longer obtain admission.

M. Gay Lussac, while he avows his opinion that the decomposition of water contributes largely to volcanic action, called attention, nevertheless, to the supposed fact, that hydrogen had not been detected in a separate form among the gaseous products of volcanoes; nor can it, he says, be present; for, in that case, it would be inflamed in the air by the red-hot stones thrown out during an eruption. Dr. Davy, in his account of Graham Island, says, "I watched when the lightning was most vivid, and the eruption of the greatest degree of violence, to see if there was any inflammation occasioned by this natural electric spark--any indication of the presence of inflammable gas; but in vain."[765]

May not the hydrogen, Gay Lussac inquires, be combined with chlorine, and produce muriatic acid? for this gas has been observed to be evolved from Vesuvius--and the chlorine may have been derived from sea salt; which was, in fact, extracted by simple was.h.i.+ng from the Vesuvian lava of 1822, in the proportion of nine per cent.[766] But it was answered, that Sir H. Davy's experiments had shown, that hydrogen is not combustible when mixed with muriatic acid gas; so that if muriatic gas was evolved in large quant.i.ties, the hydrogen might be present without inflammation.[767] M. Ab.i.+.c.h, on the other hand, a.s.sures us, "that although it be true that vapor illuminated by incandescent lava has often been mistaken for flame," yet he clearly detected in the eruption of Vesuvius in 1834 the flame of hydrogen.[768]

M. Gay Lussac, in the memoir just alluded to, expressed doubt as to the presence of sulphurous acid; but the abundant disengagement of this gas during eruptions has been since ascertained: and thus all difficulty in regard to the general absence of hydrogen in an inflammable state is removed; for, as Dr. Daubeny suggests, the hydrogen of decomposed water may unite with sulphur to form sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and this gas will then be mingled with the sulphurous acid as it rises to the crater.

It is shown by experiment, that these gases mutually decompose each other when mixed where steam is present; the hydrogen of the one immediately uniting with the oxygen of the other to form water, while the excess of sulphurous acid alone escapes into the atmosphere. Sulphur is at the same time precipitated.

This explanation is sufficient; but it may also be observed that the flame of hydrogen would rarely be visible during an eruption; as that gas, when inflamed in a pure state, burns with a very faint blue flame, which even in the night could hardly be perceptible by the side of red-hot and incandescent cinders. Its immediate, conversion into water when inflamed in the atmosphere, might also account for its not appearing in a separate form.

Dr. Daubeny is of opinion that water containing atmospheric air may descend from the surface of the earth to the volcanic foci, and that the same process of combustion by which water is decomposed may deprive such subterranean air of its oxygen. In this manner he explains the great quant.i.ties of nitrogen evolved from volcanic vents and thermal waters, and the fact that air disengaged from the earth in volcanic regions is either wholly or in part deprived of its oxygen.

Sir H. Davy, in his memoir on the "Phenomena of Volcanoes," remarks, that there was every reason to suppose in Vesuvius the existence of a descending current of air; and he imagined that subterranean cavities which threw out large volumes of steam during the eruption, might afterwards, in the quiet state of the volcano, become filled with atmospheric air.[769] The presence of ammoniacal salts in volcanic emanations, and of ammonia (which is in part composed of nitrogen) in lava, favors greatly the notion of air as well as water being deoxidated in the interior of the earth.[770]

It has been alleged by Professor Bischoff that the slight specific gravity of the metals of the alkalies is fatal to Davy's hypothesis, for if the mean density of the earth, as determined by astronomers, surpa.s.s that of all kinds of rocks, these metals cannot exist, at least not in great quant.i.ties in the interior of the earth.[771] But Dr. Daubeny has shown, that if we take the united specific gravity of pota.s.sium, sodium, silicon, iron, and all the materials which, when united with oxygen, const.i.tute ordinary lava, and then compare their weight with lava of equal bulk, the difference is not very material, the specific gravity of the lava only exceeding by about one-fourth that of the unoxidized metals. Besides, at great depths, the metallic bases of the earths and alkalies may very probably be rendered heavier by pressure.[772] Nor is it fair to embarra.s.s the chemical theory of volcanoes with a doctrine so purely gratuitous, as that which supposes the entire nucleus of the planet to have been at first composed of unoxidated metals.