366 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY, 



from the centre of the planet outwardly in all radial directions, since it is so 

 isolated in space and so remote from the central body of our system. 



Earthquakes, emissions of lava from orifices in the globe, and the forma- 

 tion of islands and continents, are all minima or maxima sequences of one 

 and the same SYSTEM of cosmical dynamics. This consists in the elastic 

 movements of plutonic matter the repelling action of particles from the 

 centre of gravity in all directions upon the crust of the globe. These 

 phenomena do not result from mere solar attraction as commonly under- 

 stood and taught as operating on the nearest matter presented in the planet- 

 ary mass, and thus drawing it away from that more remote, inasmuch as 

 this operation would relieve the crust from the pressure of molten matter, 

 or any other sort of matter beyond it, and prevent what Newton's theory of 

 tides, as taught, might at first thought make probable. They cannot cither 

 depend on the light or heat of the sun, because earthquakes occur with as 

 great force and frequency in the night, when the ruptured point of the planet 

 is most remote from the sun, as when it is under the sun's meridian. Besides, 

 it is well known that solar heat only penetrates the earth a few feet, and that 

 it does not affect the bottoms of oceans at all, while earthquakes and vol- 

 canic eruptions frequently take place in all oceans, and also in high northern 

 and southern latitudes. 



All discussions of this subject tend to carry me further and further from 

 the acceptance of any physical theory now received among philosophers. 



Gravitation itself does not indeed become a questionable fact in my con- 

 siderations, but when applied alone to the inquiry into the nature of these 

 phenomena it fails to explain them. They demonstrate the expression of a 

 force whose dynamical sequences declare the reverse of gravitation, although 

 the present relations of matter were primarily brought about by, and do in 

 reality exist through the agency of this force. 



A careful review of the subject shows that, while solar attraction is in- 

 versely as the square of the earth's distance, and while the planet, through- 

 out its mass and volume, moves in space as if it were a unit or mere point 

 in obedience to this law, the individual particles of the planet are, in like man- 

 ner and in reality, held to its centre by an attraction ichich follows the same law. 

 This gravitation of individual particles, all aggregating in radial lines from 

 the outmost bounds of the atmosphere to the centre of the sphere, constitutes 

 the earth's density. It then follows that the earth is subject to the same law 

 which we know to reign over the density of comets and planets ; that is, the 

 nearer the sun the greater the intensitv of attraction between its individual 



t/ 



particles, and the stronger the attractions of these to the centre of gravity ; 

 in other words, the greater its density, not the greater attraction of one side 

 awtiy from the centre, and still more from its antipode, but the greater the 

 attraction in both these points at the same moment to the centre of gravity. 



Now, as the earth's density depends on the gravitating power of its indi- 

 vidual particles to its centre, winch centralizing force varies inversely ivith the 

 earth's distance fwm the sun, or, in more exact words, is inversely as the 

 square of the radius vector, we discover vast and unexplored fields of inquiry 

 open to research respecting the daily changes and developments of force ' 



