134 MEMOIR OF DR. BALTON, AND 



be elevated in an elastic state, and a division or separation 

 would be made in the midst of the great abyss, between the 

 waters which were of a nature subtle enough to be converted 

 by that degree of heat into an elastic fluid, constituting the 

 firmament or atmosphere, and the waters which could not be 

 evaporated in that degree of heat, but still remained cover- 

 ing the surface of the globe, being not collected into one 

 place, that the dry land might appear, till the third day. 

 This notion of the atmosphere and its formation, seems to be 

 conformable enough to Newton's opinion expressed in his 

 letter to Mr. Boyle. " I conceive the confused mass of 

 vapours, air, and exhalations, which we call the atmosphere, 

 to be nothing else but the particles of all sorts of bodies of 

 which the earth consists, separated from one another and 

 kept at a distance by the said principle," a principle of re- 

 pulsion." * 



Here we have the one element again or matter treated simply 

 as matter generally, in the same way in which metaphysicians 

 have dealt with it, leaving heat and, probably as by others ex- 

 pressed, some general plastic power to form all the modifications. 

 This is much too indefinite for science, and it is surprising 

 that it should have been deemed sufficient even in Bishop 

 Watson's time. There is no attempt to examine the degree of 

 heat which may convert a solid body into a permanent 

 gaseous one, and no difficulty perceived in the persistence of 

 the atmosphere in a gaseous state whilst exposed to no more 

 cold than the solid or liquid substances around us, or the 

 persistence of the water in a liquid state, or the permanency 

 of the earth, why it did not occasionally send off rocks into 

 vapour or rarefy them into air ; nor is there any attempt to 

 find what strange powers may cause the diversity of struc- 

 ture. Although not expressed, these words were evidently 



* Chemical Essays. By R. Watson, D.D., F.R.S., &c. Vol. I., p. 100. 

 4th Edition. London, 1787. 



