I 



GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES. 245 



GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES.* 



By Pkof. W. T. SOLLAS, F. E. S. 



ISr the days when geology was young, now some two hundred 

 years ago, it found a careful foster-mother in theology, who 

 watched over its early growth with anxious solicitude, and stored 

 its receptive mind with the most beautiful stories, which the 

 young science never tired of transforming into curious fancies of 

 its own, which it usually styled " theories of the earth." 



Of these, one of the most famous in its day and generation 

 was that of Thomas Burnett, published in 1684, in a work of 

 great learning and eloquence. Samuel Pepys, of diary fame, is 

 said to have found great delight in it, and it is still possible to 

 turn to it with interest when jaded with the more romantic 

 fiction of our own day. 



It was the fashion to commence these theories with chaos, and 

 chaos, according to Barnett, was a disorderly mixture of particles 

 of earth, air, and water, floating in space ; it was without form, 

 yet not without a center, a center indeed of gravity, toward 

 which the scattered particles began to fall, but the grosser, on 

 account of " their more lumpish nature," fell more quickly than 

 the rest, and reaching the center first accumulated about it in a 

 growing heap, a heap, as we might now express it, of fallen me- 

 teorites; the lighter particles, which form fluids, followed the 

 heavier in their descent and collected around the solid kernel to 

 form a deep ocean. This was at first a kind of emulsion, like 

 milk, formed of oily and watery particles commingled, and, just 

 as in the case of milk, there separated on standing a thick, 

 creamy upper layer, which floated on the "skim milk" below. 

 That this really happened, the good Burnett bravely remarks, 

 " we can not doubt." The finest dust of chaos was the last to fall, 

 and it did not descend till the cream had risen ; with which it 

 mingled to form, under the heat of the sun, the earth's first crust, 

 an excellent but fragile pastry, consisting of fine earth mixed 

 with a benign juice, which formed a fertile nidus for the origin 

 of living things. Outside nothing now was left but the lightest 

 and most active particles of all, and these " flying ever on the 

 wing, play in the open spaces " about the earth, and constitute 

 the atmosphere of air. 



Such was the earth when first it formed the abode of unfallen 

 man perfect in form and beauty, for it was a true sphere, 

 smooth as an egg ; undisfigured by mountains, and unwasted by 

 the sea. It was unfortunately but too like an egg, since its fra- 



* British Association address to workiiigmen. 



