“But this disappearance, while interesting to a geologist or a thinker, is not an event which need cause the present generation any anxiety. Neither our children nor our grandchildren will be in a position to detect in any sensible degree its progress.
“If I may be permitted, therefore, to close these remarks with a somewhat fanciful suggestion, I will add that it would be assuredly the acme of foresight to build today a new ark, in which to escape the consequences of this coming universal deluge.”
Such was the learnedly developed thesis of the president of the geological society of France. His calm and moderate statement of the secular action of natural forces, opening up a future of 4,000,000 years of life, had allayed the apprehension excited by the comet. The audience had become wonderfully tranquillized. No sooner had the orator left the platform and received the congratulations of his colleagues than an animated conversation began on every side. A sort of peace took possession of every mind. People talked of the end of the world as they would of the fall of a ministry, or the coming of the swallows—dispassionately and disinterestedly. A fatality put off 40,000 centuries does not really affect us at all.
But the permanent secretary of the academy of meteorology had just ascended the tribune, and everyone gave him at once the strictest attention:
“Ladies and gentlemen: I am about to lay before you a theory diametrically opposed to that of my eminent colleague of the Institute, yet based upon facts no less definite and a process of reasoning no less rigorous.
“Yes, gentlemen, diametrically opposed—”
The orator, gifted with an excellent voice, had perceived the disappointment settling upon every face.
“Oh,” he said, “opposed, not as regards the time which nature allots to the existence of humanity, but as to the manner in which the world will come to an end; for I also believe in a future of several million years.
“Only, instead of seeing the subsidence and complete submergence of the land beneath the invading waters, I foresee, on the contrary, death by drought, and the gradual diminution of the present water supply of the Earth. Some day there will be no more ocean, no more clouds, no more rain, no more springs, no more moisture, and vegetable as well as animal life will perish, not by drowning, but through lack of water.
“On the Earth’s surface, indeed, the water of the sea, of the rivers, of the clouds, and of the springs, is decreasing. Without going far in search of examples, I would remind you, gentlemen, that in former times, at the beginning of the quaternary period, the site now occupied by Paris, with its 9,000,000 of inhabitants, from Mount Saint-Germain to Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, was almost entirely occupied by water; only the hill of Passy at Montmartre and Père-Lachaise, and the plateau of Montrouge at the Panthéon and Villejuif emerged above this immense liquid sheet. The altitudes of these plateaus have not increased, there have been no upheavals; it is the water which has diminished in volume.
“It is so in every country of the world, and the cause is easy to assign. A certain quantity of water, very small, it is true, in proportion to the whole, but not negligible, percolates through the soil, either below the sea bottoms by crevices, fissures and openings due to submarine eruptions, or on the dry land; for not all the rain water falls upon impermeable soil. In general, that which is not evaporated, returns to the sea by springs, rivulets, streams and rivers; but for this there must be a bed of clay, over which it may follow the slopes. Wherever this impermeable soil is lacking, it continues its descent by infiltration and saturates the rocks below. This is the water encountered in quarries.
“This water is lost to general circulation. It enters into chemical combination and constitutes the hydrates. If it penetrates far enough, it attains a temperature sufficient for its transformation into steam, and such is generally the origin of volcanoes and earthquakes. But, within the soil, as in the open air, a sensible proportion of the water in circulation becomes changed into hydrates, and even into oxides; there is nothing like humidity for the rapid formation of rust. Thus recombined, the elements of water, hydrogen and oxygen, disappear as water. Thermal waters also constitute another interior system of circulation; they are derived from the surface, but they do not return there, nor to the sea. The surface water of the Earth, either by entering into new combinations, or by penetrating the lower rock-strata, is diminishing, and it will diminish more and more as the Earth’s heat is dissipated. The heat-wells which have been dug within a hundred years, in the neighborhood of the principal cities of the world, and which afford the heat necessary for domestic purposes, will become exhausted as the internal temperature diminishes. The day will come when the Earth will be cold to its center, and that day will be coincident with an almost total disappearance of water.
“For that matter, gentlemen, this is likely to be the fate of several bodies in our solar system. Our neighbor the Moon, whose volume and mass are far inferior to those of the Earth, has grown cold more rapidly, and has traversed more quickly the phases of its astral life; its ancient ocean-beds, on which we, today, recognize the indubitable traces of water action, are entirely dry; there is no evidence of any kind of evaporation; no cloud has been discovered, and the spectroscope reveals no indication of the presence of the vapor of water. On the other hand, the planet Mars, also smaller than the Earth, has beyond a doubt reached a more advanced phase of development, and is known not to possess a single body of water worthy of the name of ocean, but only inland seas of medium extent and slight depth, united with each other by canals. That there is less water on Mars than on
