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Elinor Wylie - "Nets to Catch the Wind"

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Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel




Some have imagined that a change in the position of the earth's axis
of rotation, due to the elevation of extensive mountain-tracts
between the poles and the equator, might have caused a degree of cold
sufficient to produce the phenomena of the Drift; but Geikie says--

"It has been demonstrated that the protuberance of the earth at the
equator so vastly exceeds that of any

[1. "Geological Sketches," p. 210.]

{p. 59}

possible elevation of mountain-masses between the equator and the
poles, that any slight changes which may have resulted from such
geological causes could have had only an infinitesimal effect upon
the. general climate of the globe."[1]

Let us reason together:--

The ice, say the glacialists, caused the Drift. What caused the ice?
Great rains and snows, they say, falling on the face of the land.
Granted. What is rain in the first instance? Vapor, clouds. Whence
are the clouds derived? From the waters of the earth, principally
from the oceans. How is the water in the clouds transferred to the
clouds from the seas? By evaporation. What is necessary to
evaporation? _Heat_.

Here, then, is the sequence:

If there is no heat, there is no evaporation; no evaporation, no
clouds; no clouds, no rain; no rain, no ice; no ice, no Drift.

But, as the Glacial age meant ice on a stupendous scale, then it must
have been preceded by heat on a stupendous scale.

Professor Tyndall asserts that the ancient glaciers indicate the
action of heat as much as cold. He says:

"Cold will not produce glaciers. You may have the bitterest northeast
winds here in London throughout the winter without a single flake of
snow. Cold must have the fitting object to operate upon, and this
object--the aqueous vapor of the air--is the direct product of heat.
Let us put this glacier question in another form: the latent heat of
aqueous vapor, at the temperature of its production in the tropics,
is about 1,000° Fahr., for the latent heat augments as the
temperature of evaporation descends.

A pound of water thus vaporized at the equator has absorbed one
thousand times the quantity of heat which

[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 98.]

{p. 60}

would raise a pound of the liquid one degree in temperature. . . . It
is perfectly manifest that by weakening the sun's action, either
through a defect of emission or by the steeping of the entire solar
system in space of a low temperature, _we should be cutting off the
glaciers at their source_."[1]

Mr. Croll says:

"Heat, to produce _evaporation_, is just as essential to the
accumulation of snow and ice as cold to produce condensation."[2]

Sir John Lubbock says:

"Paradoxical as it may appear, the primary cause of the Glacial epoch
may be, after all, _an elevation of the temperature in the tropics_,
causing a greater amount of evaporation in the equatorial regions,
and consequently a greater supply of the raw material of snow in the
temperate regions during the winter months."[3]

So necessary did it appear that heat must have come from some source
to vaporize all this vast quantity of water, that one gentleman,
Professor Frankland,[4] suggested that the ocean must have been
rendered hot by the internal fires of the earth, and thus the water
was sent up in clouds to fall in ice and snow; but Sir John Lubbock
disposes of this theory by showing that the fauna of the seas during
the Glacial period possessed an Arctic character. We can not conceive
of Greenland shells and fish and animals thriving in an ocean nearly
at the boiling-point.

A writer in "The Popular Science Monthly"[5] says:

"These evidences of vast accumulations of ice and snow on the borders
of the Atlantic have led some theorists

[1. "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion," p. 192.

2. "Climate and Time," p. 74.

3. "Prehistoric Times," p. 401.

4. "Philosophical Magazine," 1864, p. 328.

5. July, 1876, p. 288.]

{p. 61}

to suppose that the Ice period was attended, if not in part caused,
by a far more abundant evaporation from the surface of the Atlantic
than takes place at present; and it has even been conjectured that
submarine volcanoes in the tropics might have loaded the atmosphere
with an unusual amount of moisture. This speculation seems to me,
however, both improbable and superfluous; improbable, because no
traces of any such cataclysm have been discovered, and it is more
than doubtful whether the generation of steam in the tropics, however
large the quantity, would produce glaciation of the polar regions.
The ascent of steam and heated air loaded with vapor to the altitude
of refrigeration would, as it seems to me, result in the rapid
radiation of the heat into space, and the local precipitation of
unusual quantities of rain; and the effect of such a catastrophe
would be slowly propagated and feebly felt in the Arctic and
Antarctic regions.

When we consider the magnitude of the ice-sheets which, it is claimed
by the glacialists, covered the continents during the Drift age, it
becomes evident that a vast proportion of the waters of the ocean
must have been evaporated and carried into the air, and thence cast
down as snow and rain. Mr. Thomas Belt, in a recent number of the
"Quarterly Journal of Science," argues that the formation of
ice-sheets at the poles _must have lowered the level of the oceans of
the world two thousand-feet!_

The mathematician can figure it out for himself: Take the area of the
continents down to, say, latitude 40°, on both sides of the equator;
suppose this area to be covered by an ice-sheet averaging, say, two
miles in thickness; reduce this mass of ice to cubic feet of water,
and estimate what proportion of the ocean would be required to be
vaporized to create it. Calculated upon any basis, and it follows
that the level of the ocean must have been greatly lowered.

What a vast, inconceivable accession of _heat_ to our

{p. 62}

atmosphere was necessary to lift this gigantic layer of ocean-water
out of its bed and into the clouds!

The ice, then, was not the cause of the cataclysm; it was simply one
of the secondary consequences.

We must look, then, behind the ice-age for some cause that would
prodigiously increase the _heat_ of our atmosphere, and, when we have
found _that_, we shall have discovered the cause of the
drift-deposits as well as of the ice.

The solution of the whole stupendous problem is, therefore, heat, not
cold.

{p. 63}

PART II.

The Comet.

CHAPTER I.

A COMET CAUSED THE DRIFT.

Now, good reader, we have reasoned together up to this point. To be
sure, I have done most of the talking, while you have indulged in
what the Rev. Sydney Smith called, speaking of Lord Macaulay,
"brilliant flashes of silence."

But I trust we agree thus far that neither water nor ice caused the
Drift. Water and ice were doubtless associated with it, but neither
produced it.

What, now, are the elements of the problem to be solved?

First, we are to find something that instantaneously increased to a
vast extent the heat of our planet, vaporized the seas, and furnished
material for deluges of rain, and great storms of snow, and
accumulations of ice north and south of the equator and in the high
mountains.

Secondly, we are to find something that, _coming from above_,
smashed, pounded, and crushed "as with a maul," and rooted up as with
a plow, the gigantic rocks of the surface, and scattered them for
hundreds of miles from their original location.

{p. 64}

Thirdly, we are to find something which brought to the planet vast,
incalculable masses of clay and gravel, which did not contain any of
the earth's fossils; which, like the witches of Macbeth,

Look not like th' inhabitants of earth,
And yet are on it; "

which are marked after a fashion which can not be found anywhere else
on earth; produced in a laboratory which has not yet been discovered
on the planet.

Fourthly, we are to find something that would produce cyclonic
convulsions upon a scale for which the ordinary operations of nature
furnish us no parallel.

Fifthly, we are to find some external force so mighty that it would
crack the crust of the globe like an eggshell, lining its surface
with great rents and seams, through which the molten interior boiled
up to the light.

Would a comet meet all these prerequisites?

I think it would.

Let us proceed in regular order.

{p. 65}

CHAPTER II.

WHAT IS A COMET?

IN the first place, are comets composed of solid, liquid, or gaseous
substances? Are they something, or the next thing to nothing?

It has been supposed by some that they are made of the most
attenuated gases, so imponderable that if the earth were to pass
through one of them we would be unconscious of the contact. Others
have imagined them to be mere smoke-wreaths, faint mists, so rarefied
that the substance of one a hundred million miles long could, like
the genie in the Arabian story, be inclosed in one of Solomon's brass
bottles.

But the results of recent researches contradict these views:

Padre Secchi, of Rome, observed, in Donati's comet, of 1858, from the
15th to the 22d of October, that the nucleus threw out intermittingly
from itself appendages having the form of brilliant, coma-shaped
masses of incandescent substance twisted violently backward. He
accounts for these very remarkable changes of configuration by the
influence first of the sun's heat upon the comet's substance as it
approached toward perihelion, and afterward by the production in the
luminous emanations thus generated of enormous tides and perturbation
derangements. Some of the most conspicuous of these luminous
developments occurred on October 11th, when the comet was at its
nearest approach to the earth, and on

{p. 66}

October 17th, when it was nearest to the planet Venus. He has no
doubt that the close neighborhood of the earth and Venus at those
times was the effective cause of the sudden changes of aspect, and
that those changes of aspect may be accepted _as proof that the
comet's substance consists of "really ponderable material."_

Mr. Lockyer used the spectroscope to analyze the light of Coggia's
comet, and he established beyond question that--

"Some of the rays of the comet were sent either from _solid
particles_, or from vapor in a state of _very high condensation_, and
also that beyond doubt other portions of the comet's light issue from
the vapor _shining by its own inherent light_. The light coming from
the more dense constituents, and therefore giving a continuous
colored spectrum, was, however, deficient in blue rays, and was most
probably emitted _by material substance at the low red and yellow
stages of incandescence_."

Padre Secchi, at Rome, believed he saw in the comet "carbon, or an
oxide of carbon, as the source of the bright luminous bands," and the
Abbé Moigno asks whether this comet may not be, after all, "_un
gigantesque diamant volatilisé_."

"Whatever may be the answer hereafter given to that question, the
verdict of the spectroscope is clearly to the effect that the comet
is made up of a _commingling of thin vapor and of denser particles_,
either compressed into the _condition of solidification_, or into
some physical state approaching to that condition, and is therefore
entirely in accordance with the notion formed on other grounds that
the nucleus of the comet is a _cluster of solid nodules or granules_,
and that the luminous coma and tail are jets and jackets of vapor,
associated with the more dense ingredients, and _swaying and
streaming about them as heat and gravity, acting antagonistic ways,
determine_."[1]

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 210.]

{p. 67}

If the comet shines by reflected light, it is pretty good evidence
that there must be some material substance there to reflect the light.

"A considerable portion of the light of the comet is, nevertheless,
borrowed from the sun, for it has one property belonging to it that
only reflected light can manifest. It is capable of being polarized
by prisms of double-refracting spar. Polarization of this character
is _only possible_ when the light that is operated upon has already
been reflected _from an imperfectly transparent medium_."[1]

There is considerable difference of opinion as to whether the bead of
the comet is solid matter or inflammable gas.

"There is nearly always a point of superior brilliancy perceptible in
the comet's head, which is termed its nucleus, and it is necessarily
a matter of pressing interest to determine what this bright nucleus
is; whether it is really a kernel of hard, solid substance, or merely
a whiff of somewhat more condensed vapor. Newton, from the first,
maintained that the comet is _made partly of solid substance_, and
_partly of an investment of thin, elastic vapors_. If this is the
case, it is manifest that the central nodule of dense substance
should be capable of intercepting light when it passes in front of a
more distant luminary, such as a fixed star. Comets, on this account,
have been watched very narrowly whenever they have been making such a
passage. On August 18, 1774, the astronomer Messier believed that he
saw a second bright star _burst into sight from behind the nucleus of
a comet which had concealed it the instant before_. Another observer,
Wartmann, in the year 1828, noticed that the light of an
eighth-magnitude star was _temporarily quenched as the nucleus of
Encke's comet passed over it_."[2]

Others, again, have held that stars have been seen through the
comet's nucleus.

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 207.

2. Ibid., p. 206.]

{p. 68}

Amédée Guillemin says:

"Comets have been observed whose heads, instead of being nebulous,
have presented the appearance of stars, with which, indeed, they have
been confounded."[1]

When Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Urania, he thought it
was a comet.

Mr. Richard A. Proctor says:

"The spectroscopic observations made by Mr. Huggins on the light of
three comets show that a certain portion, at least, of the light of
these objects _is inherent_. . . . The nucleus gave in each case
three bands of light, indicating that the substances of the nuclei
consisted of glowing vapor."[2]

In one case, the comet-head seemed, as in the case of the, comet
examined by Padre Secchi, to consist of pure carbon.

In the great work of Dr. H. Schellen, of Cologne, annotated by
Professor Huggins, we read:

"That the nucleus of a comet can not be in itself a dark and solid
body, such as the planets are, is proved by its great transparency;
but this does not preclude the possibility of its consisting of
_innumerable solid particles_ separated from one another, which, when
illuminated by the sun, give, by the reflection of the solar light,
the impression of a homogeneous mass. It has, therefore, been
concluded that comets are either composed of a substance which, like
gas in a state of extreme rarefaction, is perfectly transparent, or
of _small solid particles_ individually separated by intervening
spaces through which the light of a star can pass without
obstruction, and which, held together by mutual attraction, as well
as by gravitation toward a denser central conglomeration, moves
through space _like a cloud of dust_. In any case the connection
lately noticed by Schiaparelli, between comets and meteoric

[1. "The Heavens," p. 239.

2. Note to Guillemin's "Heavens," p. 261.]

{p. 69}

showers, seems to necessitate the supposition that in many comets a
similar aggregation of particles seems to exist."[1]

I can not better sum up the latest results of research than by giving
Dr. Schellen's words in the work just cited:

"By collating these various phenomena, the conviction can scarcely be
resisted that the nuclei of comets not only emit their own light,
which is that of a glowing gas, but also, together with the coma and
the tail, reflect the light of the sun. There seems nothing,
therefore, to contradict the theory that the mass of a comet may be
composed of _minute solid bodies_, kept apart one from another in the
same way as the infinitesimal particles forming a cloud of dust or
smoke are held loosely together, and that, as the comet approaches
the sun, the most easily fusible constituents of these small bodies
become wholly or partially vaporized, and in a condition of _white
heat_ overtake the remaining solid particles, and surround the
nucleus in a self-luminous cloud of glowing vapor."[2]

Here, then, we have the comet:

First, a more or less solid nucleus, on fire, blazing, glowing.

Second, vast masses of gas heated to a white heat and enveloping the
nucleus, and constituting the luminous head, which was in one case
fifty times as large as the moon.

Third, solid materials, constituting the tail (possibly the nucleus
also), which are ponderable, which reflect the sun's light, and are
carried along under the influence of the nucleus of the comet.

Fourth, possibly in the rear of all these, attenuated volumes of gas,
prolonging the tail for great distances.

What are these solid materials?

[1. "Spectrum Analysis," 1872.

2. Ibid., p. 402.]

{p. 70}

Stones, and sand, the finely comminuted particles of stones ground
off by ceaseless attrition.

What is the proof of this?

Simply this: that it is now conceded that meteoric showers are shreds
and patches of cometic matter, dropped from the tail; _and meteoric
showers are stones_.

"Schiaparelli considers meteors to be dispersed portions of the
comet's original substance; that is, of the substance with which the
comet entered the solar domain. Thus comets would come to be regarded
as consisting of _a multitude of relatively minute masses_."[1]

Now, what is the genesis of a comet? How did it come to be? How was
it born?

In the first place, there are many things which would connect them
with our planets.

They belong to the solar system; they revolve around the sun.

Says Amédée Guillemin:

"Comets form a part of our solar system. Like the. planets, they
revolve about the sun, traversing with very variable velocities
extremely elongated orbits."[2]

We shall see reason to believe that they contain the same kinds of
substances of which the planets are composed.

Their orbits seem to be reminiscences of former planetary conditions:

"All the comets, having a period not exceeding seven years, travel in
the same direction around the sun as the planets. Among comets with
periods less than eighty years long, five sixths travel in the same
direction as the planets."[3]

[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. v, p. 141.

2. "The Heavens," p. 239.

3. American Cyclopedia," vol. v, p. 141.]

{p. 71}

It is agreed that this globe of ours was at first a gaseous mass; as
it cooled it condensed like cooling steam into a liquid mass; it
became in time a molten globe of red-hot matter. As it cooled still
further, a crust or shell formed around it, like the shell formed on
an egg, and on this crust we dwell.

While the crust is still plastic it shrinks as the mass within grows
smaller by further cooling, and the wrinkles so formed in the crust
are the depths of the ocean and the elevations of the mountain-chains.

But as ages go on and the process of cooling progresses, the crust
reaches a density when it supports itself, like a couple of great
arches; it no longer wrinkles; it no longer follows downward the
receding molten mass within; mountains cease to be formed; and at
length we have a red-hot ball revolving in a shell or crust, with a
space between the two, like the space between the dried and shrunken
kernel of the nut and the nut itself.

Volcanoes are always found on sea-shores or on islands. Why? Through
breaks in the earth the sea-water finds its way occasionally down
upon the breast of the molten mass; it is at once converted into gas,
steam; and as it expands it blows itself out through the escape-pipe
of the volcano; precisely as the gas formed by the gunpowder coming
in contact with the fire of the percussion-cap, drives the ball out
before it through the same passage by which it had entered. Hence,
some one has said, "No water, no volcano."

While the amount of water which so enters is small because of the
smallness of the cavity between the shell of the earth and the molten
globe within, this process is carried on upon a comparatively small
scale, and is a safe one for the earth. But suppose the process of
cooling to go on uninterruptedly until a vast space exists between the

{p. 72}

crust and the core of the earth, and that some day a convulsion of
the surface creates a great chasm in the crust, and the ocean rushes
in and fills up part of the cavity; a tremendous quantity of steam is
formed, too great to escape by the aperture through which it entered,
an explosion takes place, and the crust of the earth is blown into a
million fragments.

The great molten ball within remains intact, though sorely torn; in
its center is still the force we call gravity; the fragments of the
crust can not fly off into space; they are constrained to follow the
master-power lodged in the ball, which now becomes the nucleus of a
comet, still blazing and burning, and vomiting flames, and wearing
itself away. The catastrophe has disarranged its course, but it still
revolves in a prolonged orbit around the sun, carrying its broken
_débris_ in a long trail behind it.

This _débris_ arranges itself in a regular order: the largest
fragments are on or nearest the head; the smaller are farther away,
diminishing in regular gradation, until the farthest extremity, the
tail, consists of sand, dust, and gases. There is a continual
movement of the particles of the tail, operated upon by the
attraction and repulsion of the sun. The fragments collide and crash
against each other; by a natural law each stone places itself so that
its longest diameter coincides with the direction of the motion of
the comet; hence, as they scrape against each other they mark each
other with lines or _striæ_, lengthwise of their longest diameter.
The fine dust ground out by these perpetual collisions does not go
off into space, or pack around the stones, but, still governed by the
attraction of the head, it falls to the rear and takes its place,
like the small men of a regiment, in the farther part of the tail.

Now, all this agrees with what science tells us of the constitution
of clay.

{p. 73}

"It is a finely levigated silico-aluminous earth--formed by the
disintegration of feldspathic or granite rocks."[1]

The particles ground out of feldspar are finer than those derived
from mica and hornblende, and we can readily understand how the great
forces of gravity, acting upon the dust of the comet's tail, might
separate one from the other; or how magnetic waves passing through
the comet might arrange all the particles containing iron by
themselves, and thus produce that marvelous separation of the
constituents of the granite which we have found to exist in the Drift
clays. If the destroyed world possessed no sedimentary rocks, then
the entire material of the comet would consist of granitic stones and
dust such as constitutes clays.

The stones are reduced to a small size by the constant attrition:

"The stones of the 'till' are not of the largest; indeed, bowlders
above four feet in diameter are comparatively seldom met with in the
till."[2]

And this theory is corroborated by the fact that the eminent German
geologist, Dr. Hahn, has recently discovered an entire series of
organic remains in meteoric stones, of the class called _chrondites_,
and which he identifies as belonging to classes of sponges, corals,
and crinoids. Dr. Weinland, another distinguished German,
corroborates these discoveries; and he has also found fragments in
these stones very much like the youngest marine chalk in the Gulf of
Mexico; and he thinks he sees, under the microscope, traces of
vegetable growth. Francis Birgham says:

[1. "American Cyclopædia," article "Clay."

2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 10.]

{p. 74}

"This entire ex-terrestrial fauna hitherto discovered, which already
comprises about fifty different species, and which originates from
different meteoric falls, even from some during the last century,
conveys the impression that it doubtlessly once formed part of _a
single ex-terrestrial-celestial body_ with a unique creation, which
in by-gone ages seems to have been overtaken by a grand catastrophe,
during which it was broken up into fragments."[1]

When we remember that meteors are now generally believed to be the
droppings of comets, we come very near to proof of the supposition
that comets are the _débris_ of exploded planets; for only on planets
can we suppose that life existed, for there was required, for the
growth of these sponges, corals, and crinoids, rocks, earth, water,
seas or lakes, atmosphere, sunshine, and a range of temperature
between the degree of cold where life is frozen up and the degree of
heat in which it is burned up: hence, these meteors must be fragments
of bodies possessing earth-like conditions.