406 Rev. E. Hill — On Rapid Elevation. 



novel and most potent agency. I doubt whether either view is 

 altogether correct or defensible. 



In the paper referred to (Q J.G.S. vol. xlviii. p. 332) there is quoted 

 a discussion by Mr. Hopkins on the results from " paroxysmal 

 elevations " of areas at the bottom of the sea. The writer, however, 

 says that he himself is contemplating "not such great changes 

 and jjowerful [resulting] currents," but still, movements of this 

 character in which "the uplift was rapid." "It is evident," he 

 says, " that we have in this form of disturbance an engine of 

 enormous power." The phenomena called the ' Kubble Drift ' of 

 southern England, he suggests, may have been produced by currents 

 of water pouring off from areas " rapidly uplifted." The areas 

 uplifted are to be variable and uneven land-surfaces. The amounts, 

 however, of uplift are not indicated clearly, and the degrees of 

 rapidity not at all. What amounts of elevation are contemplated, 

 and what rates would be regarded as ' rapid ' ? 



Darwin records sudden elevations in Chili to the extent of ten 

 feet (Nat. Voyage, chap. xiv.). Lyell mentions a subsidence reaching 

 forty feet; but the area was small, and subsidence is a much simpler 

 matter than elevation. I think that twenty feet may be regarded 

 as a considerable height through which to ' rapidly ' raise even a few 

 counties along the coast. ' Kapidly ' it must be remembered is a 

 relative word. Light is rapid compared with sound ; its velocity 

 being neai'ly a million times as great. A cannon ball is also rapid 

 compared with a snail : if a snail's pace be an inch per minute the 

 one is also about a million times the other. But the rates of elevation, 

 so far as I know them, which have been measured in Scandinavia 

 and elsewhere are such that to change them into the pace of 

 such a snail would be a greater multiplication of speed than that 

 required to make the snail gallop alongside the cannon ball. In 

 an old jesting problem of our childhood, a snail was set to climb 

 twenty feet of wall at the rate of two feet per day. Accelerate his 

 jDace so that in six hours only he can climb the whole twenty feet ; 

 to increase his pace into that of a cannon ball would require no 

 greater change than the increase that would lift Scandinavia through 

 twenty feet in six hours. Would not this be a ' paroxysmal ' change ? 



Again, the force required to produce such elevation would be 

 prodigious. We know, indeed, little of the forces at work under 

 the earth's crust, but is any force we are acquainted with able to 

 produce a perceptible fraction of such a result? Most violent 

 Japanese earthquakes exhaust their potency in vibrations measured 

 by inches or by less. What must be the violence which could 

 23ermanently uplift a country several feet ! Mr. Whymper saw 

 Cotopaxi eject a mass of ash which he calculates at two million tons 

 or more. This enormous mass was shot up to a height of 20,000 

 feet in a single minute." But the work so done would not suffice to 

 uplift the mere surface soil of an English county through a single 



' Travels among the Great Andes of the Equator, p. 328. I am not sure whether 

 he means that the whole operation was completed in a minute. If not, the force in 

 action was less than I am assuming it to have been. 



