EECEEATIVE SCIENCE. 



253 



" Sicilian Etna's blood-red flame was seen 

 Fitfully flickering." 



PHYSICAL EVIDENCES OF THE INTEENAL HEAT OF THE EARTH. 



PAST I. — VOLCANOES AND EAETHQIJAKKS. 



The ancients believed in tlie existence, below 

 the surface of the earth, of vast fiery fur- 

 naces, the abode of volcanic agencies, and the 

 place of destination for lost souls. Though 

 the Greeks, in their fables of Typhajus, Tar- 

 tarus, Pluto, and Vulcan, were indebted to 

 more ancient and more noble philosophies 

 than their own for ideas higher than the 

 Hellenic standard, and though they reduced 

 the cosmogonies of India and Egypt to the 

 low level of their own familiar gods, enough 

 may be seen reflected in their fanciful mytho- 

 logy to show the prevalence, in times of re- 



VoL.I, — Kg, , 



mote antiquity, of a vague notion that the 

 terrestrial globe is the depository of exhaust- 

 less fires. This idea is illustrated and 

 established by the latest and most searching 

 investigations of a purely physical kind, and 

 is an addition to the list of in8tance3 wherein 

 science has contributed to the confirmation 

 of poetical old-world notions. Perhaps there 

 is no instance so happUy illustrative of the 

 close connection between Poetry and Science 

 as this, for assuredly nothing is more boldly 

 poetic than the idea that the solid earth we 

 tread is merely the cool outer slioH of a ball 



