April 3, 1871}.] -i7o (Price. 



surfiice is fashioned b}' exterior iigeiiciesthat level, smooth ami beautify the 

 world, and lit it for man's use and enjoyment, but which can never mar 

 the sublimity of the cataract, or the majesty of the mountains; many of these 

 •ci'owned with never wasted snows. Some volcanoes yet burn to relieve 

 the earth of the throes of its internal heat and gases, and to tame the 

 earthquakes; yet are the latter sufficing agencies needed to raise the moun- 

 tains commensurately with the degradations of the disintegrations and 

 erosions of prevailing frosts, heats and rains. None of these, however dis- 

 turb the general movements of the earth in its orbit, or on its axis, by the 

 slightest vibration, or cause the delay of a second in time in its annual 

 revolution. The Supreme Ruler has taken into the account every cause, 

 and provided against disturbance, in advance; or at every moment, keeps 

 all things adjusted to absolute truthfulness. The cooling and shrinkage of 

 the earth's crust, would upon mechanical principle, shorten the radius of 

 the earth's axis, and hasten its rotation, and shorten the day^ but as Hum- 

 bolt saj's, this is provided against by the celestial movements l)eing adapted 

 to the thermal condition of our planet; and '"from the comparison of the 

 secular inequalities of the Moon with the eclipses observed in ancient times, 

 it follows that since the time of Hipparchus, that is, for two thousand 

 years, the length of the day has certainly not diminished by the hundredth 

 part of a second. The decrease of the mean heat of the globe during a 

 period of two thousand years, has not, therefore, taking the extremest 

 limits, diminished as much as 3^5 of a degree of Fahrenheit." 4 Humboldt's 

 Cosmos, 168. 



Some scientific men, and some that may not be truly such, seem fond of 

 writing sensationallj^ to disparage the creation and to alarm mankind as 

 to the stability and permanence of our planetary home, Andrew Wilson, 

 in giving his travels in "The Abode of Snow," or Himalaya, in the first 

 page of his preface suggests that it is not ""an improbable theory that when 

 the accumulation of ice round the south pole has reached a certain point, 

 the balance of the earth must be suddenly destroyed, and this orb shall almost 

 instantaneously turn transversely toils axis, moving the great oceans, and so 

 producing one of those cyclical catmtrophies, which there is some reason to be- 

 lieve have before now interfered with the development and civilization of the 

 human race," One supposes, of course, the traveler to be playfully jocose 

 when he thus speaks to recommend his favorite Himalaya as a safe place of 

 retreat; the Himmels or heavens of our Aryan ancestors; yet Professor 

 Winchell in a work of science is even more sensational, and has several 

 ■serious chapters upon the inevitable jirogress of Creation to its ruin ; in 

 •chapters headed "The Reign of Universal Winter," " Tlie Sun Cooling 

 off, " " The Machinery of the Heavens Running Down ;" and quotes Helm- 

 holtz as saying, "The inexorable laws of mechanics shew that the store of 

 lieat in the sun must he finally exhausted." And thus the author of the ar- 

 ticle "Force," in Chamber's Encyclopedia, gives his views of the finality ; 

 ■"This, then, it appears, is to be the last scene of the great mystery of the 

 Taniverse, chaos and darkness, as 'in the beginning.' " 



