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II.—The Source of Volcanic Heat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

G. Poulett-Scrope
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Extract

In his letter to the Editor, inserted in the last Number of this Magazine (p.332), Mr. Mallet says he is “compelled to repeat” the statements he had persistently made, and I had more than once denied, as to my having, “in almost all my writings,” upheld “the moribund thin crust and liquid nucleus theroy”and “ Hopkins's fiery lakes.” He defends himself from the charge of having “misapprehended,” as was suggested in an Editorial foot-note to his paper, or, as I more truly phrased it, “misrepresented,” my views on these subjects, refusing to be bound by what I may have “written in the scattered magazine articles ” to which he was referred, on the plea that “an author's notions are usually gathered from his acknowleged systematic works.”

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Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 1 , Issue 8 , August 1874, pp. 342 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1874

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References

page 342 note 1 In order that there may be no room for evasion as to the nature of the theory attributed to me from first to last by Mr. Mallet, I quote here one or two passages from his “Reply” to my Observations on his Theory, etc., Geol. Mag. for March, 1874, p. 127:—“ The so-called mechanical theory of a liquid nucleus, that is, of a nucleus in liquid fusion beneath an extremely thin solid crust, has already given way, etc.” “ “Mr. Scrope't own notions, which involve that very thin crust and liquid nucleus, as most recently formulated by him, do not, I believe, materially differ from those formed and enunciated by him some thirty years ago.” ⃛“ The progress of science has, however, shown the untenability of the views still espoused by Mr. Scrope, of an immense liquid nucleus, and an excessively thin solid crust, as well as the notion of subterranean fiery lakes, or a continuous liquid shell between the crust and nucleus.” ⃛“Yet this gigantic incandescent nucleus and parenchymatous surface skin Mr. Scrope, and the school to which he belongs, must have, or their theories are impossible.“

page 343 note 1 See for another example p. 133 of Reply, etc. (Geol. Mag. for March, 1874), in which Mr. Mallet, after declaring that “ the limits within -which the fusing temperature of rocks can be raised or lowered by difference of pressure are unquestionably too small to play any important part in geologic phenomena,” adds: “ The notion was seized upon by Hopkins as offering some feeble support to his wild hypothesis of subterranean lava-lakes.” And lower, in the same page, he characterizes my “notion” that water existed in the rock-matter from which lava is formed previously to its fusion, as “wholly untenable,” and again, three lines further on. as “utterly untenable”—a favourite epithet with Mr. Mallet, and employed by him, here as elsewhere, in lieu of argument.

page 343 note 2 See Silliman's Journal for July, 1873, p. 10, and the same work for April, 1873, pp. 264–7.

page 345 note 1 In Mr. Mallet's own words, “ not a mere local phenomenon, but a great cosmical condition, pervading every part of the thick and solid crust of the globe,” p. 130 of Reply, Geol. Mag. for March, 1874.

page 345 note 2 “I have proved that the total amount of heat annually carried off from our globe by existing volcanic action cannot by any possibility exceed the 1/1000 part of the total heat annually dissipated from our globe.”—Mallet, loc. cit. p. 131.Google Scholar