e 



or 103 desrrees for a mile. If this rate continues, 

 at two miles the rocks would be hot as boiling 

 water, and further down there would be heat 

 enough to melt st^el ; at forty miles down, the 

 same rate would find 4,140 decrees which is a 

 greater heat than we can produce. Although the 

 crust is not probably more than 25 miles 

 in thickness, it is a very small proportion of it 

 that we can pierco through. The deepest mine 

 some time back nasthe Comstock Lode in Nevada 

 and this was under a mile. Here the silver miners 

 were s.t overcome by the heat, that they were often 

 brought to the surface in a fainting condition.and 

 strong men were only allowed to work a f«w hours 

 at a time. In Paris, a well boring was made 1,800 

 feet deep, and yieldt^d water at 82 degrees. At Bux- 

 ton, the hot springs are the same — 82 degrees. In 

 London, a boring 1,302 feet — water at 72 degrees. 

 At Bath the hot springs rise to the surtace always 

 at the same heat.and that is 120 degrees Furh. Of 

 course, the geysers or gushers of Iceland are hotter 

 still and these continual discharges ot hot water 

 at so many places, must materially lessen the 

 internal heat. But when we think of a lava stream 

 of molten mineral matter which flowed in Iceland, 

 was fifty miles long, five to twelve miles wide, 

 100 tc 600 feet deep, and moving on the surface 

 of the frozen ground at the rate of 1^ miles in 

 fourteen minutes, it is readily seen that the 

 internal heat must, with such a discharge, be 

 materially lessened. 



Glaciers. — At the Poles the sea level is the snow 

 line. At the Equator the snow line is 16.000 feet 

 above the sea. In the Alp^i, the summer snow line 

 is 8,800 feet above the sea. Iq regions of perpetual 

 snow, the summer sun never melts all the snow, 

 and unless some means had been devised to get 

 rid of the accumulations, all the lain would in 

 time get to the Poles, and be ice. Kylief is pro- 

 vided by glaciers. The snow fields and ice sheets 

 are often 3,000 feet thick in Greenland and Spitz- 

 bergen, and the enormous weight slips and slides 

 down the mountains and through the valleys, 

 always going to the lowest place in the firm of 

 mighty frozen rivers, and although the motion is 

 almost imperceptible, seldom more than 24 inches 

 in 24 hours, it is very sure. On arrival at the sea, 

 one such glacier had a depth of solid ice 2,000 feet, 

 and a towering cliff of 60 miles in length, and it is 

 by the breaking off of the ends of sui-h mighty 

 rivers of ice that the enormous icebergs are 

 formed, and go floating south, to melt and be 

 drawn as vapour once again and water the earth 

 in rain. If in crossing the Atlantic you sight a 

 *' berg," and it rises 100 feet out of the water, it 

 means that it is nearly 1,000 feet in thickness. 

 Ice fluats with about one-tenth out of water. As 

 a prr of that coast ice encloses vast quantities of 

 shoie rock and debris, and, in fiuatmg away, de- 

 posits its mineral load at the buttom of the sea, 

 a diver recently going df>wn in the Baltic to 

 examine a ship sunk thirty-five years before, 

 found the deck strewn with stones and boulders 

 of all sizes. 



Although we do not live long enough to see 

 radical changes on the face of the earth, great 

 changes havn and do take place. Our own British 

 Isles were higher than th»y are to-day, and the 



last great movement was a tilt from the North to 

 South, raising Scotland, depressing Southern 

 England, and separating us from the Continent. 

 The Isle of Wight, if raised 60ft., would be united 

 with Hampshire. These Islands rest on a platform; 

 50 miles off the south ciaet and the west of Ireland 

 the sea is but about 100 fathoms deep, but at that 

 point suddenly drops to from 500 to 1,000 fathoms 

 deep.which looks as though the continent of Europe 

 included these islands, and 50 miles more to the 

 south and west. Changes other than are caused by 

 seismic action, alter the contour of our coasts. 

 While in some places new land is» formed by de- 

 posits of silt, old cliffs are broken down and hun- 

 dreds of acres washed away. In 13'30 \ d., Norwich 

 was on an arm of the sea ; to-day it is far inland. 

 The flats on which Yarmouth is built, were formed 

 about 1000 years ago by the river Yare depositing 

 at its month a bar of sand which held back the 

 silt, and eventually formed a large marsh. The 

 Fen country ia a sifted up bay. The Wantsum. 

 Channel from Kichborough to Reculvers was re- 

 corded in 800 A.D. by the Ven. Bede to be three 

 furlongs in width, and this long after the Roman 

 fleets sailed through it. In 1345 it was so 

 narrow that an act of Parliament was 

 obtained to build a bridge over it. 

 To-day, nothing but a narrow dyke remain?: 

 On the south we have Roraney Marsh, a silted up 

 bay, we have gained 100 square miles of *-xceUent 

 grazing land, and hold it from the sea with 

 barriers of earth. The adjoining town of Rye was 

 once destroyed by the sea ; silt now keeps the sea 

 two miles away. Good garden soil is generally 

 black in colour, through the decaying vegetable 

 matter in it. Worms are a feeble fulk, but in 

 thirty years they would cjver all the gmund with 

 six inches of new soil ; this is equal to 62.000 tons 

 every year on one square mile. In prouf of land 

 washed away, we might mention that the site of 

 Old Cromer ia now in the German Ocean. Dooms- 

 day Bot)k tells of Ravenspur, which in 1068 lost 

 two large tracts of land ; later records tell of a 

 monastery, then several churches, then the old 

 port, then 400 houses, and last of all the gaol, town 

 hall, and roads all washed away. Reculvers 

 Church was a mile from the sea when Henry VIII. 

 was on the throne ; the sea now wasbts its base. 

 Four Martello towers near Pevensey, erected so 

 lately as 1806, have been destroyed, and their sites 

 are now below high water mark. S*^lsea Bill had 

 a park, a palace, and a Cathedral in a. d. 731 — the 

 site is now a mile from shore. 



We have now very briefly glanced at some few 

 of the items included in this wonderful study of 

 geology, and you .vill probably agree with mft 

 that it is a fascinating study, brimful of interest, 

 pleasure and delight. Theie was a time when no 

 life could exist on this planet, consequently there 

 was a time when life began. As yet. we have do 

 evidence when it began ; life is enormously older 

 than any traces of it. If asked where life began, 

 we do not know, but can say that the Polar region 

 cooled first, and in Silurian times the Nurth Polar 

 region was warm enough to support tropical life. 



Did it ever occur to you that plants possess a 

 power that animals du not possess? Power to 

 produce visible out of invisible. Animals cannot 



