The Hollow Earth

by F. T. Ives

This chapter being devoted to rainfalls, a few introductory observations may be in order. The essential need on Earth’s surface for growth of vegetation, and the sustenance of life, depending thereon in some form, is in universal irrigation, which Nature failed to furnish by its internal provision of water with its outflow of springs and lakes, except by artificial use. The rainfall on the Earth is no more intended for filling of springs, lakes and seas than it is for supplying us with fuel. It is simply a provision for surface watering of vegetation, and has no more effect on the existence of living springs and subterranean outflow of water than the eclipse of the moon. There never was a rainfall, except, perhaps, in Noah’s time, that wet the general surface of the country to the depth of three feet, and rarely one-half of that. It is generally called a good, soaking rain that moistens the bottom of the potato hills, and to wet what the soil will hold one to two feet requires a prodigious amount of water. It is claimed by proprietors of orange groves that a volume of water of six inches in depth is requisite to thoroughly irrigate the grove. If the claim that rain has no effect on the supplies of springs and lakes be true, you will ask why it is that after a long drouth and a heavy rainfall, the springs resume running, and water returns into wells that have for a time been dry? The effect on those sources of supply is simply the same as results from wetting a sponge to take up water which will not absorb and be taken up in a dry one. You can easily be convinced of this effect. To show that water will run uphill or away from the Earth: The surface of the Earth becoming saturated, and in some places penetrating into the seams and crevices of rock and soil, at once forms a medium of attraction for the waters below to follow. Another valid reason is the general condition of the atmosphere from the time of drouth to a condition of moisture when it becomes really a mammoth sponge after being dampened. Against the claim that rainfall has little or no influence in raising or producing springs or lakes, or living wells, this question naturally arises regarding springs, which has in a measure been answered. It is, however, a pertinent question, and a pleasant one to answer fully.

In the summer season, most commonly of any, the air becomes hot and dry. The surface of the Earth loses the moisture of the air’s influence, together with the Sun’s heat evaporating the dampness, becomes generally arid, and fails thereby to be a conductor of the moisture from below.

As a season of very dry atmosphere occurs for months at times, the soil becomes correspondingly dry and dusty to quite a depth. From this cause the springs and water in wells recede and sink away. It is an easy matter to find people who have witnessed the following seeming phenomena in times of drouth: After a period of weeks or months of drouth before any rainfall has occurred at all, the fountains, long dry, often commence to run, and wells begin to fill with water, and this without a drop of rain.

Just here comes the pleasant task of answering the question fully: How can this occur without a soaking rain?

At such times, when the Earth and all nature is thirsting for water, and every fountain seems to have dried up forever, the day will come which will bring these evidences.

The aged will complain of their rheumatism; men’s bones will ache; geese will wash in the dust; the peacock will scream; birds, beasts and vegetation will feel a humidity in the air and intuitions that rain is near. As the atmosphere has felt the approach and preparation for rain some time in advance, so all Nature feels its effects. To illustrate the burned or dry condition of the air, you may consider this test: Take a pail of water, and a dry sponge, big as your head, and lay the sponge on the surface, and it will take a long time for the sponge to absorb the water and become fully saturated. Wet the sponge before the test and squeeze it dry as you can, and lay it on, and it will fill rapidly and quickly. Pour a pail of water on the floor and try the same experiment. Your sponge will not fill at all if dry, only a little as it comes in contact with the water; but moisten it as before, and press it nearly dry, and throw on the puddle of water, and it will drink itself full at once, drawing up the water like a pump. You cannot wipe up a floor with a dry sponge.

The springs and wells that have dried and receded a short distance from their usual level from lack of moisture in the air that penetrates the surface, quickly feel a returning moist condition and are drawn by the same influence upward as the water climbs up through the damp sponge.

The atmosphere performs the same duty as the sponge, and this answers why the springs and wells resume running before a drop of rain has fallen, and which, when it comes in copious quantities, still adds to the general effect of making a stronger draft on the fountains below.

Another question proper to ask scientists is this: If the rainfall affects springs and lakes, how is it that the analysis of mineral springs in all quarters of the globe is not affected by every change of season? How can the waters of Saratoga, Carlsbad, Waukeska, Kissengen or of any other such spring be relied on for uniform assays? How can this great variety of springs come in such near proximity to each other and possess such distinctive curative properties as at Saratoga, for example? Within a radius of two or three miles are springs, one of which is a cathartic, another a diuretic, another emetic, another tonic, and so on, no two alike, but retain their individuality through all times, wet or dry? They are affected only in amount of flow by the same atmospheric conditions of either dryness or moisture, as just described.

When the atmosphere is heavily charged with moisture, it becomes a mammoth sponge, and this condition of air, evidently, is what precipitates thunder showers in the summer. As all the hills and mountains are the result of water upheavals, they are for this reason the reservoirs of water for watering the Earth, and therefore quicker to respond to atmospheric conditions than the plains.