Abstract
LONDON
Geological Society, June 23.-Mr. John Evans, V.P.R.S., president, in the chair.-Some observations on the Rev. O. Fisher's remaiks on Mr. Mallet's theory of volcanic energy, read May 12, 1875, by Robert Mailer, F.R.S. The subject of the Rev. O. Fishers paper has been anticipated by one from Prof. Hilgard (Geol. Univ. of Michigan) published in the American Journal of Science (vol. vii., June 1874). The pith of the Rev. O. Fisher's communication is to a great extent comprised in the two following sentences:-1. That £ if crushing the rocks can induce fusion, then the cubes experimented upon ought to have been fused in the crushing? “2. * * If the work (of crushing) is equally distributed throughout, why should not the heat be so also? or if not, what determines the localisation? “In his reply Mr. Mallet controverts the views of the Rev. O. Fisher by bringing them into contact with acknowledged physical Jaws. He shows that c crushing alone of rocky masses beneath our earth's crust may be sufficient to produce fusion.. He also shows that the heat developed by crushing alone cannot be equally diffused throughout the mass crushed, but must be localised, and that the circumstances of this localisation must result in producing a local temperature far greater than that due to crushing. Lastly, he shows that after the highest temperatures have been thus reached, a still further and great exaltation of temperature must arise from detrusive friction and the movements of forcible deformation of the already crushed and heated material.“He therefore expresses his conviction that “there is no physical difficulty in the conception involved in his original memoir (Phil. Trans. 1873), but not there enlarged upon in detail, that the temperatures consequent upon crushing the materials of our earth's crust are sufficient locally to bring these into fusion."
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Societies and Academies . Nature 12, 222–224 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/012222a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/012222a0