GEOLOGY. 303 



/ 

 the western side. This was accounted for by supposing that the stream 



stands above the general level of the ocean, with its highest point in the 

 centre or axis of the stream, and sloping off like the roof of a house each 

 way. This stream is what modifies so agreeably the climate of Western 

 Europe, and at the same time causes its fogs. Storms that arise on the 

 coast of Africa, trailing westward, fall into its influence, and sweep 

 around its circxiit. In this stream the " San Francisco " was on the 26th 

 of December, and it was along its eastwardly current that the ship drifted. 

 The Gulf Stream is sensibly affected by the discharge of the waters in 

 winter from the Chesapeake, Delaware and Hudson. 



ON THE CAUSE OF THE PRIMITIVE INCANDESCENT CONDITION OF 

 THE EARTH AND OTHER PLANETS. 



The following paper on the above subject was read before the Royal 

 Astronomical Society by James Nasmyth, Esq. : 



No fact has been more clearly revealed by geology than that of the 

 former igneous or molten condition of our globe, and that its present con- 

 dition is the result of a succession of changes consequent on the escape, or 

 passage into space, of the greater portion of that primitive heat, the residue 

 of which occasionally manifests itself in the molten outbursts which the 

 now comparatively few active volcanoes vomit forth, and which we may 

 consider to be the expiring vestiges of the once universal molten state of 

 our globe. As I have not met with any attempt to trace to its source, or 

 assign a cause of, this primitive molten condition of the earth, in the most 

 earnest but humble spirit of philosophic suggestion and inquiry I desire to 

 offer in this brief form the result of some thoughts 011 this interesting sub- 



o o 



ject, in the hope that the following remarks may chance to suggest further 

 investigation, and so yield results more worthy of so grand a subject. In 

 order to state in the most simple form the principle upon which I base my 

 speculations on the source of the primitive heat of our globe, I would refer 

 to the well-known principle in the laws of matter namely, that when 

 matter, whether in the solid, fluid, or gaseous condition, is, by some 

 external or internal force or agency, caused to occupy less space, heat is 

 evolved. Applying this general principle to what there is such strong 

 reason to suppose was the first condition of that matter which was destined 

 to form our globe, and carrying our ideas back to the first moments of its 

 physical history at which we may suppose it to have been summoned forth 

 into existence as a nebulous mass, either distinct and separate, or as a 

 separated portion from a greater nebulous mass, and granting that the law 

 of gravitation was coexistent, it appears to me that, if we assume these 

 conditions, the inevitable result of the action of the law of gravitation, 

 operating on the particles of matter composing a nebulous mass, would be 

 a progressive decrease, or collapse, of the original volume of such nebu- 

 lous mass, and that the result of this decrease of volume by the collapse 

 action of gravitation would be accompanied by rise of temperature, more 



