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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 34, 29 May 1891, Page 13

The special agent for the Alaska division of the census was so favourably impressed by what he saw at the Catholic missions that he m»kes a special meation of them in his report to the Department. lid wv rites : •• The success achieved by these toilers in the wilderness in the way of educating and civilising native children is wonderful." One uf tbe most interesting questions relating to our planet, says Professor (i. P, Berviss, is thit of its interior constitution. Observations made in deep mines and borings indicate that the temnerature iocreases as we go downward at the average rate of 1 deg. Fahr. for every 25 feet of descent, so that, if this rate of increase continued, the temperature at the depth of a mile would be more than 100 deg. higher than at the surface, and, at the depth of forty miles, would be so high that everything including the metals, would be in a fluid conditiou. This view of the condition of the earth's interior has been adopted by many, who hold that tie crust of the earth on which we dwell is like a shell surrounding tbe molten interior. But calculations, based upon the tidal effects that the attraction of the sun and moon would have upon a globe with a liquid interior have led Sir William Thompson and others to assert that such a condition is impossible, and that the interior of the earth must be solid and exceedingly rigid to it 8 very centre. To the objections that tbe phenomena of volcanoes contradict the assumption of a solid interior, it is replied, that unquestionably the heat is very great deep beneath the surface) and th-u reservoirs of molten rock exist under volcanic districts, but that, taking the earth's interior as a whole, the pressure is so great that the tendency to liquefaction caused by the heat is overbalanced thereby. The whole question, however, is yet an open one, Iron,