80 H. P. Malet—On Earthquakes. 



tUs law, in tlie act of placing heating matter under the influence of 

 "Water. At this point we meet other geologists; the only difference 

 between us is, that our material falls into the water ; while their 

 water falls into the fire. We believe that we have already opposed 

 insurmountable obstacles to this action ; but we will now say, that if 

 the heat below our feet is a gradual progressing one, till at 25 miles, 

 or thereabouts, it could melt the hardest rocks, and if the contact of 

 water with these rocks is a necessary prelude to an earthquake or a 

 volcano, then neither of these phenomena could ever have been seen 

 or felt upon earth. If the water that percolates through the strata 

 could by any possibility reach the imaginary molten rocks, the action 

 of the volcano would be regular, and could never cease ; its action is 

 however spasmodic, at long intervals, indicating fresh energies ; 

 these must be supplied by new matter as shown above ; when this is 

 burnt out the spasm ceases, and so a volcano sleeps and wakes, till no 

 more heating materials are available. 



We have thus briefly and imperfectly given an interpretation 

 of phenomena which happen on the surface of this earth. In 

 endeavouring to fathom their causes, it seems that people have been 

 led away from Nature's laws, and have tried to explain the subject 

 by bringing in an agent, whose existence is not proved. The new 

 theory, noticed by the Spectator, is only one more proof of the 

 unsatisfactory explanations dependent on an imaginary self-existent 

 heat. Till this heat is proved to exist, every theory based upon it 

 must be rejected, and the greater necessity is there of determined 

 rejection, when we find that these phenomena can be interpreted by 

 natural laws. 



While the sun shines, and rain falls, while the earth and the water 

 produce, while these productions pass on to burial, so long will 

 combustible matter be passed on by water, attraction, pressure, and 

 gravitation to its peculiar burying-grounds ; where, sooner or later, 

 it will again be made use of to produce phenomena, which have been 

 so little understood. 



We walk along the ocean shore, or by the river bank, we see the 

 atoms moved along, we watch the landslips, and the avalanche, we 

 walk on the dry sand and see the water rise in our footprint, and we 

 see in these familiar scenes details of those vast actions which are 

 for ever at work somewhere. We have only to expand our minds to 

 keep pace with these actions, which we call phenomena. All the 

 agents we use are visible, all the materials are tangible ; a geologist 

 has no business with the intangible or the invisible. For more than 

 2000 years man has been seeking for a self-existent fire beneath our 

 feet without success; he has found some heat in the earth, where it 

 must necessarily be under the ordinary laws of pressure, with certain 

 conditions of deposits. Man has not gone beyond deposits, and has 

 no right to assume a state of things in a locality of which he is 

 ignorant. So we come to our simple conclusion. The Earthquake 

 takes place, when the area becomes liable to the law of gravitation, 

 and falls, as a snow avalanche falls over the face of a precipice, 

 because it cannot help it. 



