THE SEA TO BE SWALLOWED BY THE EARTH.

Western Star, Issue 864, 30 July 1884, Page 3

THE SEA TO BE SWALLOWED BY THE EARTH.

There is good reason for believing, with.Seamann, Le Meunicr, Erankland and Sterry Hunt, that in the remote future of the earth the waters of the sea will be withdrawn into her interior. The process of withdrawal is in reality taking place even now; Enter any cavern, such as Lent’s Hole in Devonshire, on the driest and hottest day, or even after weeks of dry weather, and you shall find the roof wet with the waters which have been slowly making their way from the surface, where they fell in the form of rain months before. Throughout the whole crust of the earth, except in a few spots where rain never falls, the same process is going on all the time. Only a portion of the water, which thus falls on the earth, ever returns to the surface in the form of springs. Artesian wells show how slowly some of the strata of tho earth permit water which has thus reached them to pass through ; but they also show how large a portion of the earth’s waters are already beneath the surface. . . It may well be that the amoun; actually withdrawn from the sea surface in this way, and not restored, does not produce a change of level of more than a foot in a thousand years. Still even that would involve a very important alteration in the aspect of the earth in such periods of time as belong to a, planet’s history. A million years would reduce the sea level by a thousand feet, and in a period of time which c annot be reckoned long when compared with the vast periods of which the heavens and the earth speak to us, every trace of water would have disappeared from the surface of the earth.—“E. A. Proctor in ‘ Good Words.’ ”