Earth and Sky Every Child Should Know Part 1

Earth and Sky Every Child Should Know.

by Julia Ellen Rogers.

PART I

THE EARTH

THE GREAT STONE BOOK

"The crust of our earth is a great cemetery where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs. They tell us who they were, and when and where they lived."--_Louis Aga.s.siz._

Deep in the ground, and high and dry on the sides of mountains, belts of limestone and sandstone and slate lie on the ancient granite ribs of the earth. They are the deposits of sand and mud that formed the sh.o.r.es of ancient seas. The limestone is formed of the decayed sh.e.l.ls of animal forms that flourished in shallow bays along those sh.o.r.es. And all we know about the life of these early days is read in the epitaphs written on these stone tables.

Under the stratified rocks, the granite foundations tell nothing of life on the earth. But the sea rolled over them, and in it lived a great variety of sh.e.l.lfish. Evidently the earliest fossil-bearing rocks were worn away, for the rocks that now lie on the granite show not the beginnings, but the high tide of life. The "lost interval" of which geologists speak was a time when living forms were few in the sea.

In the muddy bottoms of shallow, quiet bays lie the sh.e.l.ls and skeletons of the creatures that live their lives in those waters and die when they grow old and feeble. We have seen the fiddler crabs by thousands on such sh.o.r.es, young and old, l.u.s.ty and feeble. We have seen the rocks along another coast almost covered by the coiled sh.e.l.ls of little gray periwinkles, and big clumps of black mussels hanging on the piers and wharfs. All these creatures die, at length, and their sh.e.l.ls acc.u.mulate on the shallow sea bottom. Who has not spent hours gathering dead sh.e.l.ls which the tide has thrown up on the beach? Who has not cut his foot on the broken sh.e.l.ls that lie in the sandy bottom we walk on whenever we go into the surf to swim or bathe?

Read downward from the surface toward the earth's centre--

It is by dying that the creatures of the sea write their epitaphs. The mud or sand swallows them up. In time these submerged banks may be left dry, and become beds of stone. Then some of the skeletons and sh.e.l.ls may be revealed in blocks of quarried stone, still perfect in form after lying buried for thousands of years.

The leaves of this great stone book are the layers of rock, laid down under water. Between the leaves are pressed specimens--fossils of animals and plants that have lived on the earth.

THE FOSSIL FISH

I remember seeing a flat piece of stone on a library table, with the skeleton of a fish distinctly raised on one surface. The friend who owned this strange-looking specimen told me that she found it in a stone quarry. She brought home a large piece of the slate, and a stone-mason cut out the block with the fish in it, and her souvenir made a useful and interesting paper-weight.

The story of that fish I heard with wonder, and have never forgotten. I had never heard of fossil animals or plants until my good neighbour talked about them. She showed me bits of stone with fern leaves pressed into them. One piece of hard limestone was as full of little sea-sh.e.l.ls as it could possibly be. One ball of marble was a honeycombed pattern, and called "fossil coral."

The fossil fish was once alive, swimming in the sea, and feeding on the things it liked to eat, as all happy fishes do. Near sh.o.r.e a river poured its muddy water into the sea, and the sandy bottom was covered with the mud that settled on it. At last the fish grew old, and perhaps a trifle stupid about catching minnows. It died, and sank to the muddy floor of the sea. Its h.o.r.n.y bones were not dissolved by the water. They remained, and the mud filtered in and filled all the s.p.a.ces. Soon the fish was buried completely by the sediment the river brought.

Years, thousands of them, went by, and the layer of mud was so thick and heavy above the skeleton of the fish that it bore a weight of tons there, under the water. The close-packed mud became a stiff clay. After more thousands of years, the sea no longer came so far ash.o.r.e, for the river had built up a great delta of land out of mud. The clay in which the fish was hidden hardened into slate. Water crept down in the loose upper layers, dissolving out salt and other minerals, and having harder work to soak through, the lower it went. The water left some of the minerals it had acc.u.mulated, calcium and silica and iron, in the lower rock beds, making them harder than they were before, and heavier and less porous.

When the river gorge was cut through these layers of rock, the colour and thickness of each kind were laid bare. Centuries after, perhaps thousands of years, indeed, the quarrymen cut out the layers fit for building stones, flags for walks and slates for roofing. In the splitting of a flagstone, the long-buried skeleton of the fish came to light.

Under our feet the earth lies in layers. Under the soil lie loose beds of clay and sand and gravel, and under these loose kinds of earth are close-packed clays, sandstones, limestones, shales, often strangely tilted away from the horizontal line, but variously fitted, one layer to another. Under these rocks lie the foundations of the earth--the fire-formed rocks, like granite. The depth of this original rock is unknown. It is the substance out of which the earth is made, we think.

All the layered rocks are made of particles of the older ones, stolen by wind and water, and finally deposited on the borders of lakes and seas.

So our rivers are doing to-day what they have always done--they are tearing down rocks, grinding and sifting the fragments, and letting them fall where the current of fresh water meets a great body of water that is still, or has currents contrary to that of the river.

Do you see a little dead fish in the water? It is on the way to become a fossil, and the mud that sifts over it, to become a layer of slate.

Every seash.o.r.e buries its dead in layers of sand and mud.

THE CRUST OF THE EARTH

It is hard to believe that our solid earth was once a ball of seething liquid, like the red-hot iron that is poured out of the big clay cups into the sand moulds at an iron foundry. But when a mountain like Vesuvius sets up a mighty rumbling, and finally a ma.s.s of white-hot lava bursts from the centre and streams down the sides, covering the vineyards and olive orchards, and driving the people out of their homes in terror, it seems as if the earth's crust must be but a thin and frail affair, covering a fiery interior, which might at any time break out.

The people who live near volcanoes might easily get this idea.

But they do not. They go back as soon as the lava streams are cooled, and rebuild their homes, and plant more orchards and vineyards. "It is _so_ many years," say they to one another, "since the last bad eruption.

Vesuvius will probably sleep now till we are dead and gone."

This is good reasoning. There are few active volcanoes left on the earth, compared with the number that were once active, and long ago became extinct. And the time between eruptions of the active ones grows longer; the eruptions less violent. Terrible as were the recent earthquakes of San Francisco and Messina, this form of disturbance of the earth's crust is growing constantly less frequent. The earth is growing cooler as it grows older; the crust thickens and grows stronger as centuries pa.s.s. We have been studying the earth only a few hundred years. The crust has been cooling for millions of years, and mountain-making was the result of the shrinking of the crust. That formed folds and clefts, and let ma.s.ses of the heated substance pour out on the surface.

My first geography lesson I shall never forget. The new teacher had very bright eyes and _such_ pretty hands! She held up a red apple, and told us that the earth's substance was melted and burning, inside its crust, which was about as thick, in proportion to the size of the globe, as the skin of the apple. I was filled with wonder and fear. What if we children jumped the rope so hard as to break through the fragile sh.e.l.l, and drop out of sight in a sea of fiery metal, like melted iron? Some of the boys didn't believe it, but they were impressed, nevertheless.

The theory of the heated interior of the earth is still believed, but the idea that flames and bubbling metals are enclosed in the outer layer of solid matter has generally been abandoned. The power that draws all of its particles toward the earth's centre is stated by the laws of gravitation. The amount of "pull" is the measure of the weight of any substance. Lift a stone, and then a feather pillow, much larger than the stone. One is strongly drawn to the earth; the other not. One is _heavy_, we say, the other _light_.

If a stone you can pick up is heavy, how much heavier is a great boulder that it takes a four-horse team to haul. What tremendous weight there is in all the boulders scattered on a hillside! The hill itself could not be made level without digging away thousands of tons of earth. The earth's outer crust, with its miles in depth of mountains and level ground, is a crus.h.i.+ng weight lying on the heated under-substance. Every foot of depth adds greatly to the pressure exerted upon the ma.s.s, for the attraction of gravitation increases amazingly as the centre of the earth is approached.

It is now believed that the earth is solid to its centre, though heated to a high degree. Terrific pressure, which causes this heat, is exerted by the weight of the crust. A crack in the crust may relieve this pressure at some point, and a ma.s.s of substance may be forced out and burst into a flaming stream of lava. Such an eruption is familiar in volcanic regions. The fact that red-hot lava streams from the crater of Vesuvius is no proof that it was seething and bubbling while far below the surface.

Volcanoes, geysers, and hot springs prove that the earth's interior is hot. The crust is frozen the year around in the polar regions, and never between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The sun's rays produce our different climates, but they affect only the surface. Underground, there is a rise of a degree of temperature for every fifty feet one goes down. The lowest mine shaft is about a mile deep. That is only one four-thousandth of the distance to the earth's centre.

By an easy computation we could locate the known melting-point for metals and other rock materials. But one degree for each fifty feet of depth below the surface may not be correct for the second mile, as it is for the first. Again, the melting-point is probably a great deal higher for substances under great pressure. The weight of the crust is a burden the under-rocks bear. Probably the pressure on every square inch reaches thousands of tons. Could any substance become liquid with such a weight upon it, whatever heat it attained? n.o.body can answer this question.

The theory that volcanoes are chimneys connecting lakes of burning lava with the surface of the earth is discredited by geologists. The weight of the overlying crust would, they think, close such chambers, and reduce liquids to a solid condition.

Since the first land rose above the sea, the crust of the earth has gradually become more stable, but even now there is scarcely a day when the instruments called seismographs do not record earthquake shocks in some part of the earth; and the outbreaks of Vesuvius and aetna, the constant boiling of lava in the craters of the Hawaiian Islands and other volcanic centres, prove that even now the earth's crust is very thin and unstable. The further back in time we go, the thinner was the crust, the more frequent the outbursts of volcanic activity, the more readily did wrinkles form.

The sh.o.r.es of New Jersey and of Greenland are gradually sinking, and the sea coming up over the land. Certain parts of the world are gradually rising out of the sea. In earlier times the rising or the sinking of land over large areas happened much more frequently than now.

WHAT IS THE EARTH MADE OF?

"Baking day" is a great inst.i.tution in the comfortable farm life of the American people. The big range oven is not allowed to grow cold until rows of pies adorn the pantry shelves, and cakes, tarts, and generous loaves of bread are added to the store. Cookies, perhaps, and a big pan full of crisp, brown doughnuts often crown the day's work. No gallery of art treasures will ever charm the grown-up boys and girls as those pantry shelves charmed the bright-eyed, hungry children, who were allowed to survey the treasure-house, and sample its good things while they were still warm.

You could count a dozen different kinds of cakes and pies, rolls and cookies on those pantry shelves, yet several of them were made out of the same dough. Instead of a loaf of bread, mother could make two or three kinds of coffee cake, or cinnamon rolls, or currant buns, or Parker-House rolls. Even the pastry, which made the pies and tarts, was not so different from the bread dough, for each was made of flour, and contained, besides the salt, "shortening," which was b.u.t.ter or lard.

Sugar was used in everything, from the bread, which had a table-spoonful, to the cookies, which were finished with a sifting of sugar on top.

How much of the food we eat is made of a very few staple foodstuffs,--starch, sugar, fats! So in the wonderful earth and all that grows out of it and lives upon it. Only seventy different elements have been discovered, counting, besides the earth, the water and the air, and even the strange wandering bodies, called meteorites, that fall upon the earth out of the sky. Like the flour in the different cakes and pies, the element carbon is found in abundance and in strangely different combinations. As a gas, in combination with oxygen, it is breathed out of our lungs, and out of chimneys where coal and wood are burned. It forms a large part of the framework of trees and other plants, and remains as charcoal when the wood is slowly burned under a close covering. There is a good proportion of carbon in animal bodies, in the bones as well as the soft parts, and carbon is plentiful in the mineral substances of the earth.