HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC THEORY. 133 



of Fahrenheit's thermometer ; then would an atmosphere be 

 quickly formed around it, all the water on its surface, most 

 of the juices of plants and animals, and a great variety of 

 mineral particles, would be raised up in vapours and exhala- 

 tions, and whilst the heat continued would be kept suspended 

 in an elastic state, and constitute an atmosphere analogous, 

 as it may reasonably be imagined, to the chaotic state of our 

 present atmosphere, only differing from it in this, that it 

 would require a greater degree of heat in order to keep the 

 particles of matter from coalescing into one heterogeneous 

 mass. Again, in the present state of the atmosphere, suppose 

 that a great degree of cold should continue unabated for any 

 length of time, all the water on the surface of the earth would 

 be changed into a solid transparent stone, which might be 

 dug out of its quarry, and then employed in building as well 

 as marble, or any other species of stone ; all the particles of 

 air would be brought closer together ; some of them which 

 were the least elastic would be reunited : and imagining the 

 cold to be indefinitely increased, what reason can there be 

 against supposing that the whole atmosphere would be re- 

 duced into a solid state, forming a heterogeneous crust on 

 the surface of the earth ; the thickness of this crust, sup- 

 posing it to be as dense as marble, would be about four 

 yards? It will easily be understood, that water, and air, and 

 earth are, upon this hypothesis, but variations of the same 

 element introduced by heat. 



** That the atmosphere which surrounds the earth was 

 originally formed from the chaotic mass, by having the more 

 subtile parts of which that mass consisted, elevated and put 

 into an elastic state by means of heat, seems not altogether 

 improbable. We find the atmosphere or firmament immedi- 

 ately succeeding the formation of light ; now, if the effect of 

 that light was heat, be the form or matter of it what you 

 please, then would such particles of the shapeless jumble as 

 were capable of being evaporated with that degree of heat. 



