An Underground Tornado of Coal

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post  #427 

 

This simple theoretical map is an invented scheme of John Strachey (1671-1743), an early geologist who with this thinking introduced the very big geological idea of strata. The original appeared in the Philosophical Transactions in 1725 (full text here, and another, with a more-realized version of representing strata, is here), and was reprinted I believe in Popular Science Monthly in 1869 with the above illustration (somewhat changed from the original).   My interest in the image is tinged with design, as it reminds me of an enromous subterranean tornado of coal, even though what Strachey is doing here is establishing the idea of strata.  

These lines then are the strata of these geological elements as they fan themselves out like pages from a book from the center of the Earth outward.  Its all very vague at this point, but the kernel of a great idea is present.

The phrase "underground tornado" appears very few times in the intertubes with the world "shelter" accompanying it.  It is nonsensical, mostly, to think of underground weather and particularly extreme weather, but it has certainy playud itself out many times in literature in the pre-science-fiction fiction days. In some stories there are multiple suns, amd waterfalls, and vast canyons many times the size of the Grand Canyon, and so on--there just doesn't seem to be much bad weather, down there.

[Note: Strachey, a country squire and gentleman of science, published his theories and findings in two papers in 1719 and 1725, and then in a small pamphlet in 1727.]

Comments

[Ray Girvan]

That's got a term I never ran into: "coal clives". A quick look in Google Books and the OED finds "clives" to be a variant plural of "cliff", as an archaic term for the strata of rock adjoining coal seams:

4. The strata of rock lying above or between coal seams.

1721 R. Bradley Philos. Acct. Wks. Nature 7 A dark or blackish Rock, which they call the Coal Clives..The Cliff over this Vein is variegated with Cockle Shells and Fern Branches.

[John F. Ptak]

Thanks so much, Ray--you always have an interesting insight and perspective.