LINEAR ARRANGEMENT AND MAGMATIC HYPOTHESIS 287 



In 1897 Geikie showed that the volcanic rocks of central Scotland " had 

 been blown out without any trace of their coincidence with lines of fault." 

 Bronco, in Schwabia, and Boese, in Mexico, have shown similar condi- 

 tions. As we write these lines we read* that the sedimentary rocks 

 through which the remarkable row of 19 old volcanic necks penetrate on 

 the cape of Good Hope " never show the least shattering or plication." 



It is much more reasonable to assume now that volcanic forces have 

 within themselves the power to penetrate to the surface. If the interior 

 of the globe, as Arrhenius and other physicists hold and as cited by Vogt,f 

 is vast masses of highly superheated and compressed gases, these gases 

 must ever be seeking release through any porosity or even by their own 

 solvent powers. Ascending through the subcrust either from long cool- 

 ing and condensation, the contact with the vadose circulation may have 

 converted into ascending springs, the hot water of which possesses the 

 powers of solution and erosion sufficient to create a vent. To assume 

 that the conditions of the highly heated interior of the earth are impor- 

 tant is by no means a secure conclusion. 



THE MA GMA TIC H YPO THESIS 



The magmatic hypothesis not only conforms more nearly with our 

 geological facts than the crustal, but with the greater astronomical his- 

 tory of our globe, which, when considered, invariably leads back to the 

 hypothesis that the earth at one time in its astronomic history was an 

 undifferentiated magma of hot gases, like the sun. The present interior 

 of the earth, as a sequence of its history as a cooling globe, must still 

 inherit some of its ancestral conditions and all of the present materials 

 of the crust must be the ultimate products of a great mother magma, the 

 remnant of which, outwardly encrusted, still constitutes the interior, 

 with inherited celestial temperatures. 



Since the year 1900 there have been important additional contribu- 

 tions from separate lines of research, which collectively give courage to 

 those who have never been able to accept the crustal theories. These 

 contributions all tend to uphold the theory that the interior of our 

 globe is a living field of potential activity, from which matter is con- 

 stantly forcing its way in a gaseous state through the outer crust, ocean 

 and atmosphere. In fact, the dead-planet view dissolves on considering 

 some of these great processes going on within, and there is far more rea- 

 son to believe that it is still a live, heated mechanism, containing be- 

 neath the outer crust or shell a great interior magma, with all the 

 mighty forces and activities of uncombined chemical elements. 



* Report Geological Commission, Cape of Good Hope, 1900-'02. 



tZur Physik ties Vulkanismus (Geol. Foren. Forh.), Stockholm, J1900. 



