Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley
page 30 of 242 (12%)
page 30 of 242 (12%)
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Well, gunpowder is strong sometimes: but not always. You may carry it in a flask, or in your hand, and then it is weak enough. It only becomes strong by being turned into gas and steam. But steam is always strong. And if you look at a railway engine, still more if you had ever seen--which God forbid you should--a boiler explosion, you would agree with me, that the strongest thing we know of in the world is steam. Now I think that we can explain almost, if not quite, all that we know about earthquakes, if we believe that on the whole they are caused by steam and other gases expanding, that is, spreading out, with wonderful quickness and strength. Of course there must be something to make them expand, and that is _heat_. But we will not talk of that yet. Now do you remember that riddle which I put to you the other day?--"What had the rattling of the lid of the kettle to do with Hartford Bridge Flat being lifted out of the ancient sea?" The answer to the riddle, I believe, is--Steam has done both. The lid of the kettle rattles, because the expanding steam escapes in little jets, and so causes a _lid-quake_. Now suppose that there was steam under the earth trying to escape, and the earth in one place was loose and yet hard, as the lid of the kettle is loose and yet hard, with cracks in it, it may be, like the crack between the edge of the lid and the edge of the kettle itself: might not the steam try to escape through the cracks, and rattle the surface of the earth, and so cause an _earthquake_? So the steam would escape generally easily, and would only make a passing rattle, like the earthquake of which the famous jester Charles Selwyn said that it was quite a young one, so tame that you might have stroked |
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