The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays Part 6

Taking the last point first, it is interesting to note the effects upon the bulk of the ocean which has resulted from the matter dissolved in it. From the known density of average sea water we find that 100 ccs. of it weigh just 102.7 grammes. Of this 3.5 per cent. by weight are solids in solution. That is to say, 3.594 grammes. Hence the weight of water present is 99.1 grammes, or a volume of 99.1 ccs. From this we see that the salts present have increased the volume by 0.9 ccs. or 0.9 per cent.

The average depth of the ocean is 2,000 fathoms or 3,700 metres.

The increase of depth due to salts dissolved in the ocean has been, therefore, 108 feet or 33.24 metres. This result a.s.sumes that there has been no increased elastic compression due to the increased pressure, and no change of compressional elastic properties. We may be sure that the rise on the sh.o.r.e line of the land has not been less than 100 feet.

We see then that as the result of solvent denudation we have to do with a heavier and a deeper ocean, expanded in volume by nearly one per cent. and the floor of which has become raised, on an average, about 700 feet by precipitated sediment.

One of the first conceptions, which the student of geology has to dismiss from his mind, is that of the immobility or rigidity of the Earth's crust. The lane, we live on sways even to the gentle rise and fail of ocean tides

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around the coasts. It suffers its own tidal oscillations due to the moon's attractions. Large tracts of semi-liquid matter underlie it. There is every evidence that the raised features of the Globe are sustained by such pressures acting over other and adjacent areas as serve to keep them in equilibrium against the force of gravity. This state of equilibrium, which was first recognised by Pratt, as part of the dynamics of the Earth's crust, has been named isostasy. The state of the crust is that of "mobile equilibrium."

The transfer of matter from the exposed land surfaces to the sub-oceanic slopes of the continents and the increase in the density of the ocean, must all along have been attended by isostatic readjustment. We cannot take any other view. On the one hand the land was being lightened; on the other the sea was increasing in ma.s.s and depth and the flanks of the continents were being loaded with the matter removed from the land and borne in solution to the ocean. How important the resulting movements must have been may be gathered from the fact that the existing land of the Globe stands at a mean elevation of no more than 2,000 feet above sea level. We have seen that solvent denudation removed over 1,600 feet of rock. But we have no evidence that on the whole the elevation of land in the past was ever very different from what it now is.

We have, then, presented to our view the remarkable fact that throughout the past, and acting with extreme

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slowness, the land has steadily been melted down into the sea and as steadily been upraised from the waters. It is possible that the increased bulk of the ocean has led to a certain diminution of the exposed land area. The point is a difficult one. One thing we may without much risk a.s.sume. The sub-aereal current of dissolved matter from the land to the ocean was accompanied by a sub-crustal flux from the ocean areas to the land areas; the heated viscous materials creeping from depths far beneath the ocean floor to depths beneath the roots of the mountains which arose around the oceans. Such movements took ages for their accomplishment. Indeed, they have been, probably, continuous all along and are still proceeding. A low degree of viscosity will suffice to permit of movements so slow. Superimposed upon these movements the rhythmic alternations of depression and elevation of the geosynclines probably resulted in releasing the crust from local acc.u.mulation of strains arising in the more rigid surface materials. The whole sequence of movements presents an extraordinary picture of pseudo-vitality--reminding us of the circulatory and respiratory systems of a vast organism.

All great results in our universe are founded in motions and forces the most minute. In contemplating the Cause or the Effect we stand equally impressed with the spectacle presented to us. We shall now turn from the great effects of denudation upon the history and evolution of a world and consider for a moment activities

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so minute in detail that their operations will probably for ever elude our bodily senses, but which nevertheless have necessarily affected and modified the great results we have been considering.

The ocean a little way from the land is generally so free from suspended sediments that it has a blackness as of ink. This blackness is due to its absolute freedom from particles reflecting the sun's light. The beautiful blue of the Swiss and Italian lakes is due to the presence of very fine particles carried into them by the rivers; the finest flour of the glaciers, which remain almost indefinitely suspended in the water. But in the ocean it is only in those places where rapid currents running over shallows stir continually the sediments or where the fresh water of a great river is carried far from the land, that the presence of silt is to be observed. The beautiful phenomenon of the coal-black sea is familiar to every yachtsman who has sailed to the west of our Islands.[1]

There is, in fact, a very remarkable difference in the manner of settlement of fine sediments in salt and in fresh water. We are here brought into contact with one of those subtle yet influential natural actions the explanation of which involves scientific advance along many apparently unconnected lines of investigation.

[1] See Tyndall's Voyage to Algeria in _Fragments of Science._ The cause of the blue colour of the lakes has been discussed by various observers, not always with agreement.

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It is easy to observe in the laboratory the fact of the different behaviour of salt and fresh water towards finely divided substances. The nature of the insoluble substance is not important.

We place, in a good light, two gla.s.s vessels of equal dimensions; the one filled with sea water, the other with fresh water. Into each we stir the same weight of very finely powdered slate: just so much as will produce a cloudiness. In a few hours we find the sea water limpid. The fresh water is still cloudy, however; and, indeed, may be hardly different in appearance from what it was at starting. In itself this is a most extraordinary experiment. We would have antic.i.p.ated quite the opposite result owing to the greater density of the sea water.

But a still more interesting experiment remains to be carried out. In the sea water we have many different salts in solution.

Let us see if these salts are equally responsible for the result we have obtained. For this purpose we measure out quant.i.ties of sodium chloride and magnesium chloride in the proportion in which they exist in sea water: that is about as seven to one. We add such an equal amount of water to each as represents the dilution of these salts in sea water. Then finally we stir a little of the finely powdered slate into each. It will be found that the magnesium chloride, although so much more dilute than the sodium chloride, is considerably more active in clearing out the suspension. We may now try such marine salts as magnesium sulphate,

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or calcium sulphate against sodium chloride; keeping the marine proportions. Again we find that the magnesium and calcium salts are the most effective, although so much more dilute than the sodium salt.

There is no visible clue to the explanation of these results. But we must conclude as most probable that some action is at work in the sea water and in the salt solutions which clumps or flocculates the sediment. For only by the gathering of the particles together in little aggregates can we explain their rapid fall to the bottom. It is not a question of viscosity (_i.e._ of resistance to the motion of the particles), for the salt solutions are rather more viscous than the fresh water.

Still more remarkable is the fact that every dissolved substance will not bring about the result. Thus if we dissolve sugar in water we find that, if anything, the silt settles more slowly in the sugar solution than in fresh water.

Now there is one effect produced by the solution of such salts as we have dealt with which is not produced by such bodies as sugar.

The water is rendered a conductor of electricity. Long ago Faraday explained this as due to the presence of free atoms of the dissolved salt in the solution, carrying electric charges. We now speak of the salt as "ionised." That is it is partly split up into ions or free electrified atoms of chlorine, sodium, magnesium, etc., according to the particular salt in solution.

This fact leads us to think that these electrified

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atoms moving about in the solution may be the cause of the clumping or flocculation. Such electrified atoms are absent from the sugar solution: sugar does not become "ionised" when it is dissolved.

The suspicion that the free electrified atoms play a part in the phenomenon is strengthened when we recall the remarkable difference in the action of sodium chloride and magnesium chloride. In each of the solutions of these substances there are free chlorine atoms each of which carries a single charge of negative electricity. As these atoms are alike in both solutions the different behaviour of the solutions cannot be due to the chlorine. But the metallic atom is very different in the two cases. The ionised sodium atom is known to be _monad_ or carries but _one_ positive charge; whereas the magnesium atom is _diad_ and carries _two_ positive charges. If, then, we a.s.sume that the metallic, positively electrified atom is in each case responsible, we have something to go on. It may be now stated that it has been found by experiment and supported by theory that the clumping power of an ion rises very rapidly with its valency; that is with the number of unit charges a.s.sociated with it. Thus diads such as magnesium, calcium, barium, etc., are very much more efficient than monads such as sodium, pota.s.sium, etc., and again, triads such as aluminium are, similarly, very much more powerful than diad atoms. Here, in short, we have arrived at the active cause of the phenomenon. Its inner mechanism

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is, however, harder to fathom. A plausible explanation can be offered, but a study of it would take us too far. Sufficient has been said to show the very subtile nature of the forces at work.

We have here an effect due to the sea salts derived by denudation from the land which has been slowly augmenting during geological time. It is certain that the ocean was practically fresh water in remote ages. During those times the silt from the great rivers would have been carried very far from the land. A Mississippi of those ages would have sent its finer suspensions far abroad on a contemporary Gulf stream: not improbably right across the Atlantic. The earlier sediments of argillaceous type were not collected in the geosynclines and the genesis of the mountains was delayed proportionately. But it was, probably, not for very long that such conditions prevailed. For the acc.u.mulation of calcium salts must have been rapid, and although the great salinity due to sodium salts was of slow growth the salts of the diad element calcium must have soon introduced the cooperation of the ion in the work of building the mountain.

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THE ABUNDANCE OF LIFE [1]

WE had reached the Pa.s.s of Tre Croci[2]and from a point a little below the summit, looked eastward over the glorious Val Buona.

The pines which clothed the floor and lower slopes of the valley, extended their mult.i.tudes into the furthest distance, among the many recesses of the mountains, and into the confluent Val di Misurina. In the suns.h.i.+ne the Alpine b.u.t.terflies flitted from stone to stone. The ground at our feet and everywhere throughout the forests teamed with the countless millions of the small black ants.

It was a magnificent display of vitality; of the aggressiveness of vitality, a.s.sailing the barren heights of the limestone, wringing a subsistence from dead things. And the question suggested itself with new force: why the abundance of life and its unending activity?

In trying to answer this question, the present sketch originated.

I propose to refer for an answer to dynamic considerations. It is apparent that natural selection can only be concerned in a secondary way. Natural selection defines

[1] Proc. Roy. Dublin Soc., vol. vii., 1890.

[2] In the Dolomites of Southeast Tyrol; during the summer of 1890. Much of what follows was evolved in discussion with my fellow-traveller, Henry H. Dixon. Much of it is his.

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a certain course of development for the organism; but very evidently some property of inherent progressiveness in the organism must be involved. The mineral is not affected by natural selection to enter on a course of continual variation and multiplication. The dynamic relations of the organism with the environment are evidently very different from those of inanimate nature.

GENERAL DYNAMIC CONDITIONS ATTENDING INANIMATE ACTIONS

It is necessary, in the first place, to refer briefly to the phenomena attending the transfer of energy within and into inanimate material systems. It is not a.s.sumed here that these phenomena are restricted in their sphere of action to inanimate nature. It is, in fact, very certain that they are not; but while they confer on dead nature its own dynamic tendencies, it will appear that their effects are by various means evaded in living nature. We, therefore, treat of them as characteristic of inanimate actions. We accept as fundamental to all the considerations which follow the truth of the principle of the Conservation of Energy.[1]

[1] "The principle of the Conservation of Energy has acquired so much scientific weight during the last twenty years that no physiologist would feel any confidence in an experiment which showed a considerable difference between the work done by the animal and the balance of the account of Energy received and spent."--Clerk Maxwell, _Nature_, vol. xix., p. 142. See also Helmholtz _On the Conservation of Force._

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Whatever speculations may be made as to the course of events very distant from us in s.p.a.ce, it appears certain that dissipation of energy is at present actively progressing throughout our sphere of observation in inanimate nature. It follows, in fact, from the second law of thermodynamics, that whenever work is derived from heat, a certain quant.i.ty of heat falls in potential without doing work or, in short, is dissipated. On the other hand, work may be entirely converted into heat. The result is the heat-tendency of the universe. Heat, being an undirected form of energy, seeks, as it were, its own level, so that the result of this heat-tendency is continual approach to uniformity of potential.

The heat-tendency of the universe is also revealed in the far-reaching "law of maximum work," which defines that chemical change, accomplished without the intervention of external energy, tends to the production of the body, or system of bodies, which disengage the greatest quant.i.ty of heat.[1] And, again, vast numbers of actions going on throughout nature are attended by dissipatory thermal effects, as those arising from the motions of proximate molecules (friction, viscosity), and from the fall of electrical potential.

Thus, on all sides, the energy which was once most probably existent in the form of gravitational potential, is being dissipated into unavailable forms. We must