78 Kmisas Academy of Science. 



near the coast line where the thickest sediment has been de- 

 posited. This thick sediment will yield to the lateral pressurb 

 and will be mashed together and upswollen into a mountain 

 range. Not only will it be upswollen into a mountain rangp, 

 but in that very act the sea bottom and land surface will be 

 faulted and fissured, the former while yet beneath the seas. 

 The sea water will rush in to fill the opened space. The water 

 will come in contact with the heated rocks; steam will be in- 

 stantaneously generated ; explosions will follow, explosions that 

 will rend the earth from pole to pole, the debris being hurled 

 beyond our atmosphere, probably thousands of miles. (Read 

 the account of the eruption of Krakatoa in the Strait of Sunda, 

 whose erupted dust particles remained suspended in the at- 

 mosphere for over two years.) Gases destructive to life will 

 also be generated; the air will become vitiated with said ob- 

 noxious gases and dust particles ; the then existing animals 

 will seek refuge in every conceivable place from this poisonous 

 gaseous deluge, where they will be either overcome by it or 

 by hunger and thirst, or by the great lava flood which will be 

 mentioned below. Other animals will preserve their kind by 

 migration, while still others will live in more favored parts of 

 the earth, the gases, of course, being most destructive approxi- 

 mate to the disturbed districts. There will be, coincident 

 with and continuing after the great explosions, eruptions of 

 lava both on land and sea throughout the full length of the 

 faulted disturbed regions ; the former devastating the land 

 surface ; the latter, together with the contact rock heat and novv- 

 greatly heated atmosphere, will evaporate much of the ocean, 

 whose vapors, rising to higher atmospheric regions, will be 

 wafted toward the poles, where, when the reaction sets in, 

 they will be condensed and fall as snow. This snow will con- 

 tinue to fall and the temperature to decrease till the high lati- 

 tudes will be covered with immense ice sheets, because, as Mr. 

 Newton has proved, to every action there is an equal and op- 

 posite reaction. Not only that, but the change will be brought 

 on so suddenly that many of the remaining species of the 

 earth that have survived the fiery lava and gaseous dust storm 

 will be overtaken by it and there perish with cold. This is 

 the next future critical period of our earth, and also a glacial 

 epoch, not in one hemisphere only, but in both, in which the 

 ice sheets will be equally extensive and coexisting. Was the 



