THE END OF THE WORLD.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3352, 20 December 1926, Page 8

THE END OF THE WORLD.

(Bv Bassett Digby, F.R.G.S.) French scientists, recently studying the problem, have arrived at the conelusion that the end of the world will come from the eventual washing down of every country into the sea. First, the low-lying countries will silt away; then tho waters will como creeping up the valleys into the higher masses ol land At last only a scattered fur-clad human race of'a few thousands will remain round the summits of the loftiest .mountains, which, however, will be much lower and more rounded than they are to-day. Then men will have to take to his ships, for the day will come when the ripples of the ocaa» will lap over even tho summit of Ever est. However, the Frenchmen concede that many millions of years will have passed bv then. They have been devoting intensive study "to the denuding of the Alps and the rate at which those mighty ranges are being relentlessly crumbled away. The sun plays its part with frost in splitting the rocks. Frost expands water in the cracks and fissures, and sun causes cracks by uneven heating. ■Melted snow and rain arc incessantly washing the mountains down to the alluvial plains, and sea. Every river is washing earth into the sea, and nearly everywhere coasts arc being steadily eroded and the sea is gaining on the land. After exhaustive calculation it has been estimated that every year 370,797 cubic feet of earth are swallowed up by the sea, a quantity sufficient to make a Javer only 1-ootb of an inch thick on tlio sea' bed. When the earth’s 57,225,000 square miles have been washed into the ocean, the ocean bed will he 1300 feet higher—7,ooo,ooo years hence. In the meantime, of course, the destruction of the world may be effected bv a collision with a comet.