38 " XKW THEORY (>F THK ORKilN OF THE EARTH. 



here is the secret of the treiiieiuh)us power of volcanoes in 

 eruption. It mu}' reusonahly be supposed lliat free hydrogen 

 and oxygen, detonated in a volcano's chimney, ure what cause 

 the explo-^ioas. Tlie water thiH formed is c )nverted into steam 

 by the intense heat, and is carried ott' into the earth's atmos- 

 phere. The steam pressure also adds its force to the exi>losioii. 



"The amount of volcanic water." says Prof. Fairchild. ""is 

 enormous. Fouque determined thatihe amount of steam expel- 

 led from one of the numerous smallei- cones of Mt. ..-Etna was 

 equal in 100 days to 462,000,000 gallons of water. Thi^^ equals 

 16 gallons for every square foot of a squaie mile, or a depth of 

 S2 inches over an area of that extent. But the steam product of 

 the single cone was probably not the one-thousandth part, })er- 

 haps not the one ten-thousandth part, of the whole product of 

 the volcano during that time." 



From this it appears that each <4' the i)rincipal active volcanoes 

 of the world is now generating a quantity of water sufficient to 

 form a good-sized flowing river, though it pai^ses out of their 

 craters in steam, instead of flowing down their sides, if one 

 volcano at tlie present day can in tnree months ])roduce a 

 volume of water three feet deep over an area almost equal to 

 that of Lake Erie, it is easy to conceive how the process of ocenn 

 making could have been carried on by volcanoes all over the 

 world in the slow progress of ge')logical ages. And that [)rocess 

 is still going on and may account for the apparent sinking of 

 the coast line of New Brtmswick and other countries— the water 

 may be rising instead of the coast sinking. 



Another aspect of this interesting })roce>s of world-making is 

 presented by Prof, Fairchild, who says: "The seas could not 

 form until the atmosphere had accumulated sufficiently to hold 

 sun heat that woubi give the esirth a surface temperature above 

 the freezing point. Below this temperature the water which wa^ 

 forced from the earth's ii\terior must have frozen in or or: the cold 

 surface of the globe. It would seem as if there must have been 

 a long stage of conflict between the interior heat and the super- 

 ficial cold. In the early stages of the growing globe the watei' 

 was forced toward the surface only lo be buried under the in- 



