basalt

58:5.3The outer crust was about forty miles thick. This outer shell was sup­ported by, and rested di­rectly upon, a molten sea of basalt of vary­ing thick­ness, a mo­bile layer of molten lava held un­der high pres­sure but al­ways tend­ing to flow hither and yon in equal­iza­tion of shift­ing plan­e­tary pres­sures, thereby tend­ing to sta­bi­lize the earth’s crust.

58:5.4Even to­day the con­ti­nents con­tinue to float upon this non­crys­tal­lized cush­iony sea of molten basalt. Were it not for this pro­tec­tive con­di­tion, the more se­vere earth­quakes would lit­er­ally shake the world to pieces. Earth­quakes are caused by slid­ing and shift­ing of the solid outer crust and not by vol­ca­noes.

58:5.6The sea bot­toms are more dense than the land masses, and this is what keeps the con­ti­nents above wa­ter. When the sea bot­toms are ex­truded above the sea level, they are found to con­sist largely of basalt, a form of lava con­sid­er­ably heav­ier than the gran­ite of the land masses. Again, if the con­ti­nents were not lighter than the ocean beds, grav­ity would draw the edges of the oceans up onto the land, but such phe­nom­ena are not ob­serv­able.

60:1.3These de­posits vary in thick­ness from 3,000 to 10,000 feet, even be­ing 18,000 on the Pa­cific coast. Lava was later forced in be­tween many of these lay­ers. The Pal­isades of the Hud­son River were formed by the ex­tru­sion of basalt lava be­tween these Tri­as­sic strata. Vol­canic ac­tion was ex­ten­sive in dif­fer­ent parts of the world.