The Elements of Geology - William Harmon Norton (best beach reads TXT) 📗

open air. Since rivers cannot cut their valleys farther below the baselevel of the sea than the depths of their channels, DROWNED VALLEYS are among the plainest proofs of depression. To this class belong Narragansett, Delaware, Chesapeake, Mobile, and San Francisco bays, and many other similar drowned valleys along the coasts of the United States. Less conspicuous are the SUBMARINE CHANNELS which, as soundings show, extend from the mouths of a number of rivers some distance out to sea. Such is the submerged channel which reaches from New York Bay southeast to the edge of the continental shelf, and which is supposed to have been cut by the Hudson River when this part of the shelf was a coastal plain.

WARPING. In a region undergoing changes of level the rate of movement commonly varies in different parts. Portions of an area may be rising or sinking, while adjacent portions are stationary or moving in the opposite direction. In this way a land surface becomes WARPED. Thus, while Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are now rising from the level of the sea, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton Island are sinking, and the sea now flows over the site of the famous old town of Louisburg destroyed in 1758.

Since the close of the glacial epoch the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador have risen hundreds of feet, but the rate of emergence has not been uniform. The old strand line, which stands at five hundred and seventy-five feet above tide at St. John's, Newfoundland, declines to two hundred and fifty feet near the northern point of Labrador.

THE GREAT LAKES is now under-going perceptible warping. Rivers enter the lakes from the south and west with sluggish currents and deep channels resembling the estuaries of drowned rivers; while those that enter from opposite directions are swift and shallow. At the western end of Lake Erie are found submerged caves containing stalactites, and old meadows and forest grounds are now under water. It is thus seen that the water of the lakes is rising along their southwestern shores, while from their north-eastern shores it is being withdrawn. The region of the Great Lakes is therefore warping; it is rising in the northeast as compared with the southwest.

From old bench marks and records of lake levels it has been estimated that the rate of warping amounts to five inches a century for every one hundred miles. It is calculated that the water of Lake Michigan is rising at Chicago at the rate of nine or ten inches per century. The divide at this point between the tributaries of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan is but eight feet above the mean stage of the lake. If the canting of the region continues at its present rate, in a thousand years the waters of the lake will here overflow the divide. In three thousand five hundred years all the lakes except Ontario will discharge by this outlet, via the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, into the Gulf of Mexico. The present outlet by the Niagara River will be left dry, and the divide between the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi systems will have shifted from Chicago to the vicinity of Buffalo.

PHYSIOGRAPHIC EFFECTS OF OSCILLATIONS. We have already mentioned several of the most important effects of movements of elevation and depression, such as their effects on rivers, the mantle of waste, and the forms of coasts. Movements of elevation—including uplifts by folding and fracture of the crust to be noticed later— are the necessary conditions for erosion by whatever agent. They determine the various agencies which are to be chiefly concerned m the wear of any land,—whether streams or glaciers, weathering or the wind,—and the degree of their efficiency. The lands must be uplifted before they can be eroded, and since they must be eroded before their waste can be deposited, movements of elevation are a prerequisite condition for sedimentation also. Subsidence is a necessary condition for deposits of great thickness, such as those of the Great Valley of California and the Indo-Gangetic plain (p. 101), the Mississippi delta (p. 109), and the still more important formations of the continental delta in gradually sinking troughs (p. 183). It is not too much to say that the character and thickness of each formation of the stratified rocks depend primarily on these crustal movements.

Along the Baltic coast of Sweden, bench marks show that the sea is withdrawing from the land at a rate which at the north amounts to between three and four feet per century; Towards the south the rate decreases. South of Stockholm, until recent years, the sea has gained upon the land, and here in several seaboard towns streets by the shore are still submerged. The rate of oscillation increases also from the coast inland. On the other hand, along the German coast of the Baltic the only historic fluctuations of sea level are those which may be accounted for by variations due to changes in rainfall. In 1730 Celsius explained the changes of level of the Swedish coast as due to a lowering of the Baltic instead of to an elevation of the land. Are the facts just stated consistent with his theory?

At the little town of Tadousac—where the Saguenay River empties into the St. Lawrence—there are terraces of old sea beaches, some almost as fresh as recent railway fills, the highest standing two hundred and thirty feet above the river. Here the Saguenay is eight hundred and forty feet in depth, and the tide ebbs and flows far up its stream. Was its channel cut to this depth by the river when the land was at its present height? What oscillations are here recorded, and to what amount?

A few miles north of Naples, Italy, the ruins of an ancient Roman temple lie by the edge of the sea, on a narrow plain which is overlooked in the rear by an old sea cliff (Fig. 166). Three marble pillars are still standing. For eleven feet above their bases these columns are uninjured, for to this height they were protected by an accumulation of volcanic ashes; but from eleven to nineteen feet they are closely pitted with the holes of boring marine mollusks. From these facts trace the history of the oscillations of the region.

FOLDINGS OF THE CRUST

The oscillations which we have just described leave the strata not far from their original horizontal attitude. Figure 167 represents a region in which movements of a very different nature have taken place. Here, on either side of the valley V, we find outcrops of layers tilted at high angles. Sections along the ridge r show that it is composed of layers which slant inward from either side. In places the outcropping strata stand nearly on edge, and on the right of the valley they are quite overturned; a shale SH has come to overlie a limestone LM although the shale is the older rock, whose original position was beneath the limestone.

It is not reasonable to suppose that these rocks were deposited in the attitude in which we find them now; we must believe that, like other stratified rocks, they were outspread in nearly level sheets upon the ocean floor. Since that time they must have been deformed. Layers of solid rock several miles in thickness have been crumpled and folded like soft wax in the hand, and a vast denudation has worn away the upper portions of the folds, in part represented in our section by dotted lines.

DIP AND STRIKE. In districts where the strata have been disturbed it is desirable to record their attitude. This is most easily done by taking the angle at which the strata are inclined and the compass direction in which they slant. It is also convenient to record the direction in which the outcrop of the strata trends across the country.

The inclination of a bed of rocks to the horizon is its DIP. The amount of the dip is the angle made with a horizontal plane. The dip of a horizontal layer is zero, and that of a vertical layer is 90 degrees. The direction of the dip is taken with the compass. Thus a geologist's notebook in describing the attitude of outcropping strata contains many such entries as these: dip 32 degrees north, or dip 8 degrees south 20 degrees west,—meaning in the latter case that the amount of the dip is 8 degrees and the direction of the dip bears 20 degrees west of south.

The line of intersection of a layer with the horizontal plane is the STRIKE. The strike always runs at right angles to the dip.

Dip and strike may be illustrated by a book set aslant on a shelf. The dip is the acute angle made with the shelf by the side of the book, while the strike is represented by a line running along the book's upper edge. If the dip is north or south, the strike runs east and west.

FOLDED STRUCTURES. An upfold, in which the strata dip away from a line drawn along the crest and called the axis of the fold, is known as an ANTICLINE. A downfold, where the strata dip from either side toward the axis of the trough, is called a SYNCLINE. There is sometimes seen a downward bend in horizontal or gently inclined strata, by which they descend to a lower level. Such a single flexure is a MONOCLINE.

DEGREES OF FOLDING. Folds vary in degree from broad, low swells, which can hardly be detected, to the most highly contorted and complicated structures. In SYMMETRIC folds the dips of the rocks on each side the axis of the fold are equal. In UNSYMMETRICAL folds one limb is steeper than the other, as in the anticline in Figure 167. In OVERTURNED folds one limb is inclined beyond the perpendicular. FAN FOLDS have been so pinched that the original anticlines are left broader at the top than at the bottom.

In folds where the compression has been great the layers are often found thickened at the crest and thinned along the limbs. Where strong rocks such as heavy limestones are folded together with weak rocks such as shales, the strong rocks are often bent into great simple folds, while the weak rocks are minutely crumpled.

SYSTEMS OF FOLDS. As a rule, folds occur in systems. Over the Appalachian mountain belt, for example, extending from northeastern Pennsylvania to northern Alabama and Georgia, the earth's crust has been thrown into a series of parallel folds whose axes run from northeast to southwest (Fig. 175). In Pennsylvania one may count a score or more of these earth waves,— some but from ten to twenty miles in length, and some extending as much as two hundred miles before they die away. On the eastern part of this belt the folds are steeper and more numerous than on the western side.

CAUSE AND CONDITIONS OF FOLDING. The sections which we have studied suggest that rocks are folded by lateral pressure. While a single, simple fold might be produced by a heave, a series of folds, including overturns, fan folds, and folds thickened on their crests at the expense of their limbs, could only be made in one way,—by pressure from the side. Experiment has reproduced all forms of folds by subjecting to lateral thrust layers of plastic material such as wax.

Vast as the force must have been which could fold the solid rocks of the crust as one may crumple the leaves of a magazine in the fingers, it is only under certain conditions that it could have produced the results which we see. Rocks are brittle, and it is only when under a HEAVY LOAD and by GREAT PRESSURE SLOWLY APPLIED, that they can thus be folded and bent instead of being crushed to pieces. Under these conditions, experiments prove that not only metals such as steel, but also brittle rocks such as marble, can be deformed and molded and made to flow like plastic clay.

ZONE OF FLOW, ZONE OF FLOW AND FRACTURE, AND ZONE OF FRACTURE. We may believe that at depths which must be reckoned in tens of thousands of feet the load of overlying rocks is so great that rocks of all kinds yield by folding to lateral pressure, and flow instead of breaking. Indeed, at such profound depths and under such inconceivable weight no cavity can form, and any fractures would be healed at once by the welding of grain to grain. At less depths there exists a zone where soft rocks fold and flow under stress, and hard rocks are fractured; while at and near the surface hard and soft rocks alike yield by fracture to strong pressure.

STRUCTURES DEVELOPED IN COMPRESSED ROCKS

Deformed rocks show the effects of the stresses to which they have yielded, not only in the immense folds into which they have been thrown but in their smallest parts as well. A hand specimen of slate, or even a particle under the