Drift (earth)

“ If the cold of the north caused the ice, and the ice caused the Drift, then in all the cold north-lands there must have been ice, and consequently there ought to have been Drift. If we can find, therefore, any extensive cold region of the earth where the Drift is not, then we can not escape the conclusion that the cold and the ice did not make the Drift. ”

“ When a drift-current impinges directly upon a coast there is a heaping up of surface water, giving rise to a counter-current in the depths, which maintains the level, and this counter-current, although subject to deflection on account of the rotation of the earth, is deflected much less than a pure drift-current would be. Such currents, due to the banking up of water, have a large share in setting the depths of the sea in motion, and so securing the vertical circulation and ventilation of the ocean. ”

“ Here we find that, long before the age of man, a fearful catastrophe happened to the earth. Its rocks were melted--not merely decomposed, as in the Drift Age,--but actually melted and metamorphosed; the heat, as in the Drift Age, sucked up the waters of the seas, to cast them down again in great floods; it wiped out nearly all the life of the planet, even as the Drift Age exterminated the great mammals; whatever drift then fell probably melted with the burning rocks.
Here are phenomena which no ice-sheet, though it were a thousand miles thick, can explain; here is heat, not ice ”

“ Even in these cases, it is carried forward by a hopping, not a continuous, motion; for a very narrow sheet or channel of water stops the drift entirely, all the sand dropping into it until it is filled up. ”

“ It is singular how people, like drift wood on the stream of time, are at times drifted toward each other and float along together till some eddy or obstruction in the current separates them, and hurries them off in diverging directions, perhaps to meet again farther down the stream, it may be more than once. ”

“ But the revelations of the last few years prove, not only that man lived during the Drift age, and that he dwelt on the earth when the Drift fell, but that he can be traced backward for ages before the Drift ”

“ The consequence is very strange if you stand on a hilltop close under the drifting mass, and look towards the horizon in the direction of drift. The changing shadows give the impression that the clouds are actually rolling along, though of course no such thing is really taking place. As time goes on the rolls grow larger and the interspaces wider; then transverse fissures appear, and gradually the rolls break up into small detached cumulus. ”

“ Are we to remain thus, as an unceasing pendulum, traversing space, to and fro across this invisible shell of attraction from now until the end of time?"
"No; there are influences to prevent such an experience; one being the friction of the attenuated atmosphere into which we plunge each time that we cross the point of greater gravity, [Pg 334] and approach the crust of the earth. Thus each succeeding vibration is in shorter lines, and at last we will come to a state of perfect rest at the center of gravity." ”

“ The open places amid the drift were faintly shimmering, reflecting the feeble light that shone through the clouds from the stars; the drift itself loomed in fantastic shapes of pure black on the water. There were logs and patches of sticks and grass; lumps of straw-stacks; the rectangles and triangles of sides of buildings; barrels and hogs heads; tangles like jackstraws of lumber and trees. It was as if everything that will float had its kind in the masses, around which were straits and ponds and open waterways as smooth as blown glass. ”

“ Then, from the time it leaves the earth, the air must begin to lose its angular velocity, the impelling power being cut off, and form a bank higher up, opposing the motion forward of all the air following it, so that immediately above the tropics there must be forward motion and obstruction, producing whirlwinds of which we can see or know really nothing, though [235] they must exist, and which may carry air or vapours up to very great heights, carrying with them densities far beyond what would correspond to the simple attraction of the earth. ”

“ From this moment the young giant assumed the respectable aspect of a phenomenon, to be got rid of if possible, but at any rate as legitimate a subject of human study as the glacial period or the silurian what-d’ye-call-ems. If the man of the primeval drift-heaps is so absorbingly interesting, why not the man of the drift that is just beginning, of the drift into whose irresistible current we are just being sucked whether we will or no? ”

“ If the white spots on the belts were connected with drifting masses in Jupiter's atmosphere, they would drift as well as rotate. Herschel was aware of this, and, since his day, the amount of drift has been estimated at 270 miles an hour in the same direction as the rotation. ”

“ There have been drifts from east to west and west to east, from north to south and back again, drifts that have criss-crossed one another, and drifts colliding and recoiling and caroming off in new directions. ”

“ IN the first place, the Drift fell upon a fair and lovely world, a world far better adapted to give happiness to its inhabitants than this storm-tossed planet on which we now live, with its endless battle between heat and cold, between sun and ice. ”

“ This can be done in no other way than by arresting the motion of the masses. But how is such motion to be arrested? How are bodies as large as our earth, moving at the rate of hundreds of miles per second, to have their motion stopped? According to the theory this is effected by collision: by employing the motion of the one body to arrest that of the other.
Take the case of the formation of our sun according to the theory. Suppose two bodies, each one-half of the mass of the sun, moving directly towards each other with a velocity of 476 miles per second. ”

“ The disturbing action of the moon and planets, which has so powerful an effect on the revolution of the earth, in no way influences its rotation: the constant friction of the trade winds on the mountains and continents between the tropics does not impede its velocity, which theory even proves to be the same, as if the sea together with the earth formed one solid mass. ”

“ They appear to be travelling rocky or metallic fragments which in their journey through space are caught in the earth's atmosphere and instantaneously ignited by the friction. Far away in the depths of space one of these bodies felt the attracting power of the sun, and began moving towards him. As it approached, its speed grew [Pg 334] gradually quicker and quicker continually, until by the time it has approached to within the distance of the earth, it whizzes past with the velocity of twenty-six miles a second. The earth is moving on its own account nineteen miles every second. ”

“ The sheet of drift was once more continuous and extensive than it is now, and the localities in which we find these crops of boulders are spots where the tide has eaten into the drift, wearing away the finer materials, or the paste in which the larger fragments were imbedded, and allowing them to fall to the bottom, or where the same result has been produced by the action of rivers cutting their way through the drift, and thus finding an outlet to the sea. ”

“ And it is to the comet we must look for the source of a great part of those vast deposits of gravel which go to constitute the Drift.
"They have been usually attributed to the action of waves; but the mechanical work of the ocean is mostly confined to its shores and soundings, where alone material exists in quantity within reach of the waves and currents. [2] . . . The eroding action is greatest for a short distance above the height of half-tide, and, except in violent storms, it is almost null below low-tide." ”

“ We have at length, then, evidence, which admits of no question—so obviously conclusive is it—to show not only that star-drift is a reality, but that subordinate systems exist within the sidereal system. We moreover recognize an unquestionable instance of a characteristic peculiarity of structure in a certain part of the heavens. For, though star-drift exists elsewhere, yet every instance of star-drift is quite distinct in character—the drift in Cancer unlike that in Ursa, and both these drifts unlike the drifts in Taurus, and equally unlike the drift in Aries or Leo. ”

“ Hence instead of concentration we have dispersion.
The united action of the winds and the unity of the atmosphere result from this dispersion. The displacement of one molecule produces the displacement of another. The vast body of air becomes subject to one agitation. To these profound causes of coalition we must add the irregular surface of the earth, whose mountains furrow the atmosphere, contorting and diverting the winds from their course, and determining the directions of counter currents in infinite radiations. ”

“ However, the air is soon passed; if in the ether beyond there is very little friction, or none at all, we shall go at full speed, which will be the constantly increasing velocity of a falling body.
"Somewhere between the Earth and the nearest planet," he continued, "there is a place where the attraction of one is just equal to the attraction of the other; and if a body is stopped in that fatal spot it will be anchored there for ever, by the equally matched forces tugging in opposite directions. ”

“ It is further affirmed that if the second sheet of drift failed to reach the limit of the first, and if the drift which was deposited by the first and never covered by the second ice-sheet, is more thoroughly and more deeply weathered than that deposited by the second, and especially if the two types of drift surface meet along a definite and readily traceable line, the argument becomes, in our judgment, irrefragable. ”

“ The attraction of the earth, and the resistance of the atmosphere or air through which it moves, retards its progress, or it would continue moving in a strait line, with a velocity equal to that which was at first impressed upon it. ”

“ People find themselves suddenly thrown to the earth, the ground swept from under their feet. Sometimes the rolling waves of earth are absent, and the movement is a rude quiver, rapidly vibrating in every direction—twisting, contorting, wrenching the ground as if in a determined effort to shake it into dust. Sometimes the most pronounced motion is up and down, as if the earth beneath were being hammered with giant strokes. ”

“ What would happen, then, if the earth were suddenly to increase her velocity, or the sun to contract his mass?—We should be flung into infinite space, and in a short time would be frozen up completely. ”

“ Drift described.—There is a movement of the waters of the ocean which, though it be a translation, yet it does not amount to what is known to the mariner as "current," for our nautical instruments and the art of navigation have not been brought to that state of 'perfection which will enable navigators generally to detect as currents the flow to which I allude as drift. ”

“ In an earlier part of this lecture I have explained how, during all the development of the earth-moon system, the quantity of moment of momentum remains unaltered. The moment of [103] momentum of the earth's rotation added to the moment of momentum of the moon's revolution remains constant; if one of these quantities increase the other must decrease, and the progress of the evolution will have this result, that energy shall be gradually lost in consequence of the friction produced by the tides. ”

“ That the descent is a mechanical effect of the whirlwind, which creating a vacuum, or high degree of rarefaction, extending between the clouds and the earth, the clouds descend in it by their gravity, or by the pressure of the surrounding clouds or air. That the convolutions of the descending mass, and the sensible whirlwind felt at the earth, as well as the appearance of the commencement, increase and decrease of the mass, all demonstrate the whirl of the air to be the mechanical cause. ”

“ We may be sure, then, that the commencement of the drift period, and the deluge of Noah, cannot have been synchronous. But the drift agency, connected, as nearly all geologists seem now to be ready to admit, with the vertical movements of continents, may have operated, and undoubtedly has, at various periods, and very possibly, in some parts of the world, long posterior to the period usually called the drift period. ”

“ If you can reverse the order of this phenomenon, and imagine an irregular retardation of the rapidity of such atomic motion, you can read the story of the formation of the material universe. Follow the chain backward, and with the decrease of velocity, motion becomes tangible matter again, and in accordance with conditions governing the change of motion into matter, from time to time the various elements successively appear. The planets may grow without and within, and ethereal space can generate elemental dirt. ”

“ I feel . . . that the proximate cause of the phenomena of drift has at last been determined, namely, the joint action of water and ice. In 1836 there was organized a state geological survey of New York, which was placed in charge of W. W. Mather, Ebenezer Emmons, Lardner Vanuxem and James Hall—men whose names have since become too thoroughly identified with American geology to ever become eradicated. Naturally drift phenomena attracted the attention of these workers, and each expressed opinions, some of which may be referred to in detail. ”

“ If the moon rose from any part of the earth except exactly at the line or poles, the shock would tend to turn the axis of the earth out of its previous direction. And as a mass of matter rising from deep parts of the globe would have previously acquired less diurnal velocity than the earth's surface from whence it rose, it would receive during the time of its rising additional velocity from the earth's surface, and would consequently so much retard the motion of the earth round its axis. ”