II.—“The Origin of Mountains”: a Reply

Extract

I am content to leave to the readers of the Geological Magazine the question whether Colonel Burrard's theory of the elevation of mountains and Mr. Hayford's of the distribution of density to cause isostasy are more in accordance with geological phenomena than my theory of mountain roots supported in a dense liquid substratum. But in Colonel Burrard's reply to my paper in the Magazine for June there is a fundamental but specious error. I wrote: “Is it not possible that the earth's rotation may impart to it a ‘gyroscopic’ quasi rigidity, which may enable it to withstand the deforming influence of external forces [the attraction of the moon and sun], although at the same time forces internal to the earth will be unaffected by it.” To this Colonel Burrard replies: ”Mr. Fisher has argued that the rotation of the earth will give to the liquid interior an effective rigidity; but this rotation has conferred no rigidity upon our oceans, and even if it did render the liquid interior rigid, it would only do so in low latitudes where the rotation velocity is high. I understand, moreover, that the earth's interior was assumed by Mr. Fisher to be liquid, in order to explain the floatation of the crust. If the liquid is now proved to be rigid, the crust cannot be floating upon it.”