3 o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH. 



By ALFRED C. LANE. 



WHITHER man can not go his imagination the more fondly 

 travels. Thus a most striking difference between man and 

 the apes lies in the vast and boundless range of man's curiosity. 

 Curiosity indeed becomes the mother of Science, while the collec- 

 tion of curiosities grows into the scientific museum. It is natural, 

 therefore, that for generations the mysterious and inaccessible 

 north pole and the bowels of the earth have been favorite dwell- 

 ings for men's fancies. Since the abodes of the dead are equally 

 mysterious and inaccessible to the living, we are not surprised to 

 find these regions combined, and the dead consigned either to in- 

 fernal that is, inferior regions, or, as did the Scandinavian saga, 

 to the frozen north. But it was reserved for the fertile genius of 

 an American naval officer to combine with one fell swoop the 

 solution of all these mysteries into one, by supposing that the 

 world was hollow, and that there was no north pole, but, instead, 

 a vast annular cavity leading into interior and Arcadian regions, 

 auroral glimpses and flashes of whose electric lights sometimes 

 stream beyond the portals. Unfortunately, his solution is erro- 

 neous, and it is our aim in this paper to see what light science 

 really has from the dark regions of Proserpine, and to consider 

 why the world can neither be hollow nor stuffed with sawdust. 

 Our light is, of course, indirect, as the depth below the surface 

 of the earth to which man has burrowed is very small. The deep- 

 est mines are little over four thousand feet deep ; and although, 

 when one sees the rapid strides that the science of mining is mak- 

 ing and the unexampled speed with which in the past four or five 

 years shafts have been sunk over four thousand feet deep to tap 

 the rich deposits of native copper on the south shore of Lake 

 Superior, one may soon hope to see mines over a mile deep, yet, if 

 we say that mines will never go down over two miles below the 



above. For De Wette and contemporaries, see Meyer, Cheyne, and others, as above. For 

 Theodore Parker, see his various biographies, passim. For Reuss, Graf, and Kuenen, see 

 Cheyne, as above; and for the citations referred to, see the Rev. Dr. Driver, Regius Pro- 

 fessor of Hebrew at Oxford, in The Academy, October 27, 1894; also, a note to Well- 

 hausen's article Pentateuch, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For the view of leading 

 Christian critics on the book of Chronicles, see especially Driver, Introduction to the 

 Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 495 et seq. ; also Wellhausen, as above ; also, Hooy- 

 kaas, Oort, and Kuenen, Bible for Learners. For many of the foregoing see also the writ- 

 ings of Prof. W. Robertson Smith ; also, Beard's BTibbert Lectures, chap. x. For Hupfeld 

 and his discovery, see Cheyne, Founders, etc., as above, chap, vii ; also, Moore's Introduc- 

 tion. For a justly indignant judgment of Hengstenberg and his school, see Canon Farrar's 

 History of Interpretation, p. 417, note. 



