16S OBSERVATIONS ON 



applied ah extra, that is competent to produce them. Elec- 

 tricity must also be rejected ; for the whole quantity of tliat 

 fluid which exists in the universe would be insufficient to 

 charge the earth so highly, as to produce by its discharge 

 the immersion of continents and the elevation of the bottom 

 of the sea above the level of its surface. Although there 

 are non-conducting bodies in the earth ; yet as water, which 

 at every temperature between ice and vapour is an excellent 

 conductor, pervades every part of it, it would be impossil)le 

 to confine the fluid to any particular place, and the whole 

 globe would have to be charged. But the clouds and every 

 thing coming into contact with the surface, would abstract 

 at least a portion of it. Every one who has experienced 

 the difficulty of confining this fluid by the best insulation of 

 glass or resins, will readily acknowledge this. Then to col- 

 lect a sufficient quantity of fluid, would require over the 

 whole surface of the earth an uninterrupted continuance of 

 a state of things favourable to such a result for a longer pe- 

 riod than can, in the nature of things, be expected ever to 

 have taken place. Besides, only dry earth is an electric per 

 se ; for when it is mixed with water, in which state only it 

 is a constituent part of the globe, its power of being electri- 

 cally excited is proportionally decreased ; so that the solid 

 parts of the globe would, independently of the effects pro- 

 duced on them by the contact of seas and rivers, be capa- 

 ble of excitement in a degree so very low, as to render them 

 inadequate under any circumstances to collect the quantity 

 of fluid required : but when to this is added the contact of 

 lakes, rivers, and seas, we shall find that the globe is alto- 

 gether incapable of being electrically excited. In Werner's 

 theory, the alternate submersion and emergence of the dif- 

 ferent portions of the earth's surface is not a postulate, and 

 of course he does not pretend to account for it. His notion 

 that the waters originally covered the whole surface, and 

 that they gradually, and at length finally, retired into caverns 

 at the earth's centre, left empty at the creation for their 

 reception, having first deposited the strata in the broken 



