Chapter VII: Section 3

The well established Fact of Science look toward, and defend this
Theory.

1. In the relative quantities of sedimentary and lava rock. By far the greater portion of rock of all lands is sedimentary. Lava is the exception. If the source of supply is an internal sea, 7,880 miles in diameter, the reverse of this would most likely be true.

2. In the relative order of the two kinds of rock. Except in very restricted locations, sedimentary rock is at the bottom, in the middle, and at the top of the earth’s crust. Lava has never been found as an integral part of the supposed bottom rock.

3. The constituents of all rock indicate the water theory. All rock is known to be a combination of gases. The coal is admitted to have been gathered from the air, through the agency of vegetation. There are three ways gases may be combined into rock:

(1.) Through the agency of water alone. Such was the primitive granite; and such are the modern stalactites.

(2.) Through the agency of diatoms living in the water. These creatures are absorbents. They absorb the minerals of the water, and form stone. Such are lime, chalk and coral.

(3.) They may be absorbed into vegetation, and then hidden away in the waters, until changed into coal.

(4.) Sandstone and conglomerate are formed from eroded material of other rocks.

(5.) The melting of sedimentary rock in proximity to burning beds of coal has formed the lava.

(6.) Chimneys of rock crossing the lower strata, as of quartz and granite, are now known to be of water deposit. The word dyke is improperly applied to them. These circumstances all point to a center of water.

4. The question with many will arise, How can rock rest upon water? The answer is, Upon the principle of the compressibility of liquids. Water compresses a twentieth part in a thousand atmospheres. Thirty-three feet of water is equal to one atmosphere. Thirty-three thousand feet would compress one-twentieth part. We have a geometrical series, with a ratio of 1.05. In 79-1/2 miles we have twelve and three-fourths terms. The sum of the series will equal 19.127, calling 33,000 feet _one_, without compressibility. Now as the average rock, under salt water, weighs only one and a half times as much as water, we have to multiply twelve and three-fourths by one and a half to get its relative weight. This we find to be 19.125. At 79-1/2 miles in salt water, the weight of water equals rock of the same thickness. As rock displaces only its bulk of water, it will swim like an egg in strong lye at this depth.

5. The explorations which have been made of the Atlantic ocean go to sustain the Neptunian theory.

(1.) They think that they have established the fact that we had a connected land hemisphere, and a hemisphere of water. Lieutenant Maury made such extensive explorations of its contour and bed, as to well nigh demonstrate the above position. His report is, that the trough-like appearance of its bed, the corresponding walls on either side, being nearly perpendicular, showed that the continents were once together. On either side of the Atlantic the sounding line showed a gradual deepening of water for about two hundred miles from shore, when suddenly the depth became too great for measurement. This only confirms what Guizot wrote upon the same subject over fifty years ago.

In a small treatise he endeavored to prove that the continent showed a rent hemisphere of land, once altogether. That it had been rent asunder by some great convulsion of nature, and by water carried away from Africa and Europe, with which North and South America were formerly connected. His theory was, that continents and islands are but floating remnants of a once connected hemisphere.

(2.) Such a rupture could only be maintained on the hypothesis of a center of water. Should the earth open its crust, letting the ocean into its interior of melted lava, it would resemble a bomb.

6. We shall, therefore, assume that we had a land hemisphere, and that the north pole was in the center, and pointed directly to the sun throughout its entire orbit. This would involve the fact that the south half of the globe was in darkness, and locked in ice, as a great Antarctic sea.

(1.) We argue this from the widely extended remains of the polyp-builders. This animalcule inhabits only warm waters. His remains are found widely distributed in every zone from the Lower Silurian up. Iowa and Minnesota show as nice coral in their strata as is now found in the torrid seas.

(2.) From the widely scattered remains of tropical shells. They conclusively show that a warm ocean once covered the continents. Sir Chas. Lyell mentions the tropical nature of the shells about England and Labrador, and that “They indicate a very warm climate, more uniformly warm than any now existing on the Earth.”

(3.) From the remains of saurians; such as the icthyosaurus, which, like the crocodile of the Ganges, is found only in warm waters. Darwin saw one in the bank of the La Plata. No land is without their remains.

(4.) From the widely spread coal beds of Earth. Nothing in geology is better established, than that this is the product of tropical forests. All countries boast of their coal veins. Anthracite coal is often found in the frozen rocks of Greenland. A vein of the best coal, ten feet thick, was found in Nova Zembla, now covered with ice. Good coal is also found in the northern part of Alaska. A genial climate once covered these places.

(5.) From the remains of tropical animals. The evidence is conclusive, that gigantic elephants in countless herds once roamed the arctic regions of Siberia. His remains have been found in all lands, except the Scandinavian peninsula. The mastodon was his near neighbor, and his bones are generally found in the same regions. These animals depended on grass for subsistence. They could not endure a cold winter, nor live where snow lies on the ground for even a short time. We now find their remains where snow now lies from four to eight months in a year, and from two to twenty feet deep. From the region of Russian Siberia alone, more than eighty thousand pounds of their ivory have been sold in a single year. Whence, then, this warm climate, so uniform and general? It cannot be accounted for on internal heat. Heat, sufficient to warm an arctic atmosphere, if coming from the ground, would destroy all animal life, either of water or land. Geologists agree that it has not been affected so much as one degree for the last four thousand years. But we have positive proof that these animals existed down to the period of human existence. They probably have not been exterminated five thousand years. Internal heat cuts no figure in their existence. Only one hypothesis accounts for these tropical phenomena, viz., a land hemisphere, with pole in the center, pointing directly to the sun.

(6.) The sudden change of climate in some past time argues a rapid change in the axillary motion of the earth, preceded by a general rupture of the earth’s crust. It was so sudden, that animals were locked up in arctic ice, and have been preserved to our day, with flesh entire. (See the word Mammoth, W. Dictionary.) The change of pole must have been very sudden, or animals, slain by the convulsion, would have decayed at once.

(7.) The widely spread tropical flowers and fruits sustain this theory. The palm tree flourished in Europe and Central Asia; also in the northern part of North America. The magnolia blossomed at least 80 degrees north. Sir Charles Lyell claims that the earlier vegetation was generally tropical. Grass evidently flourished in all lands, the year round.

7. The nature and condition of the early rock attest the water theory. Had the crust begun upon a ball of lava, at a white heat, the ocean, readily boiling, would be thrown into the air, where it would be condensed, and by gravitation thrown back upon the thin crust. This would often give way, and the whole volume would enter the interior and explode the entire crust into atoms. In such case we should expect to find the under rock a broken mass of displaced lava. But we find the granite to have been so calmly deposited in water, and it retains its place so well, that we split it with the rift of sugar pine. Geologists estimate the earth’s crust from fifty to one hundred miles thick. Upon the Neptunian theory we at least have seventy-five miles without a particle of lava, or so much as the scratch of an iceberg. The early geologies spoke of dykes of lava, injected into granite. The furnace shows these to be water seams. No well attested lava has ever been found there.

8. The period of the great upheavals supports this theory. No grand mountains reared their lofty heads to the clouds, until this side the Carboniferous system of deposits. It is more probable that burning coal must have been the cause of the heat, and the expansion of steam the power, that rent the Earth’s crust; and the eighty miles pressure of waters suddenly liberated would bring up the granite, with all under rock, to the surface. Lava then proceeds from local deposits of melted rock, that had been stratified. If it came from a common center of a primary melted mass, there would be no occasion for ashes. The abundance of these ashes shows the consumption of some burning material, as of coal. The very witnesses which the Plutonic believers have placed upon the stand prove quite the reverse of their theory.

9. Facts show that the substance of all mountain chains was once deposited in the sea. Baron Von Humboldt remarked, “Upon the tallest mountains yet reached by the footsteps of man you may witness the ancient sea bottom.” Conglomerate shells with sand, hardened into rock in the ancient seas, are now found in all lands thousands of feet above the sea.

10. The rise and depressions of the Earth’s crust are proofs of the water theory. Lands having large rivers, carrying more debris or silt into the ocean than the weight of her vegetation, decaying, are rising; as has been demonstrated in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The terraces left attest the truth of this position.

Lands having more vegetation or ice than the weight of the debris carried into the sea are sinking. Witness Greenland and the Pacific Isles. But these islands could not well sink into a sea of burning lava, without letting in the surrounding ocean; in which case the entire crust would be destroyed.

11. The crowning reason for believing in the Neptunian theory is found in the great glacial drift period. The Neptunian hypothesis of the poles of the Earth is sufficient to account for the ice that constituted the drift. The ancient equator would mark the bound between darkness and light; and would be situated so as to manufacture icebergs the whole length of this largest circle.

The depressions of the lowlands beneath the sea are accounted for in the great upheavals. On an average, rock weighed out of water is one and two-thirds times as much as when weighed under water. All the strata of mountains and plateaus lifted from beneath the waters weigh one and two-thirds times what they did before being disturbed.

Geologists tell us that the Earth’s crust was depressed six to seven thousand feet. This would enable the ice to flow over the surface, the bergs being of enormous depth. The lowlands of every continent have been thus plowed. The evidence exists in every valley and far up the sides of all mountains. This evidence is by no means confined to scratches on the rock, but the water-washed gravel and polished pebbles equally attest its action. You can hardly sink a shaft in valley or hill without encountering them. With the present inclination of the Earth’s pole to the elliptic no such quantity of ice can possibly occur. No iceberg has ever yet been seen in tropical waters. There never yet has been enough at one time within historic note, to counteract the influence of the Gulf Stream about Norway and Iceland.

How different the ancient drift! Then the ice penetrated all open seas, caused by submergence. It plowed alike the Brazilian mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Appalachian. It chilled the seas to the very center of the submerged hemisphere; and England witnessed the dwelling of the reindeer in her borders, while it lasted. According to Sir Chas. Lyell, the temperature sank from the uniformity of our intensely warm climate to the chilliness of melting ice. The cold was now as uniform as the heat had before been constant. The north pole, pointing directly to the sun, would bring the whole land hemisphere within perpetual sunshine; and consequently, when above the sea, would be in a tropical or semi-tropical zone to the very edge. This climate would continue as long as the land could hold back the ice, which had been accumulated at the equator. But no sooner did the lowlands become submerged, than the ice would change the climate, wherever it could in large quantities accumulate. As it plowed every river, plain, and gulch, the fauna, adapted to the former climate, would naturally lose their existence. Such is the history of the drift. Ninety-seven per cent. of all land animals died. By the slow process of disintegration of the mountains, the hemisphere was again raised, and its former beautiful climate restored.