6 Theories of the Earth. 



extent connected with the matters we have been considering, and as they 

 were the ideas of the most learned men of the age, they show what progress 

 had been made in tlii^^ department of knowledge up to that time. 



According to Burnet's Sacred Theory of the earth, written in 1690, the 

 globe was at first a chaos of fluid, composed of difR^rent substances, which 

 differed also from each other, in their specific gravity. The most weighty 

 sank to the centre, and there solidified, while others floated upon the sur- 

 face and formed a crust of rich, liglit soil. The exterior of the planet be- 

 came one continuous level plain, with an equa1)le mild climate, and clothed with 

 a luxuriant vegetation. It was a paradise, into which man was introduced 

 to enjoy all the delights of existence, without the cares that vex his life 

 in modern times. On account of the sins of mankind, the Deity suffered the 

 rays of the sun, to dry up the thin surface, so that it cracked open and fell 

 in ; destroying the human race, and all living things by one great comiil- 

 8 ion. Eight persons only, were saved ; and fragments of the original crust 

 of the earth afterwards rising, above the surface of the waters, to form the 

 present islands, and continents, the few individuals preserved, settled them- 

 selves upon these and thus repeopled the globe. 



Woodward's theory, published in 1695, intended to account for the occur- 

 rence of marine remains, in the depths of the earth, and was founded upon 

 the idea, that at the time of the flood, the world was dissolved into one 

 universal fluid, in which, however, the sea-shells and bones retained their solid- 

 ity, floating freely throughout the general mass. On the restoration of the 

 earth, the heavier substances first sank to the centre, where they formed a 

 nucleus, around which the others arranged themselves in successive layers, 

 like the coats of an onion. In this way the stratification of rocks, and the 

 regularity in which the various forma-tions repose upon each other, was ex- 

 plained. 



Whiston's theory, was much more complicated. He supposes the earth 

 to have been originally a comet, subjected to the most intense heat, on its 

 near approach to the sun ; and to extreme cold, v»diile passing through those 

 distant regions of space, penetrated by such bodies, while traversing over 

 the more remote portions of their orbits. It was thus alternately melted 

 and frozen, over and over again, until its materials became thoroughly mix- 

 ed together, forming a chaos, far from being solid. He compares it to a 

 dense, though fluid atmosphere, composed of substances mingled, agitated, and 

 shocked a^-ainst each other : and in this disorder, he describes the earth to 

 have been just at the eve of creation. Its orbit was then changed, and it 

 became a planet, revolving in a circle so that it remained at all times, at 

 about the same distance from the sun. At the time of its conversion from 

 a comet into a planet, it also became in part solid, there remaining a nucle- 

 us of melted matter in the centre, surrounded by the solid crust, which lat- 

 ter as in Woodward's theory, was formed of concentric layers, while the 

 ocean being the lightest, floated upon the exterior. The tails of Comets, he 

 supposed to be formed of a watery vapor. One of these struck the earth 

 and occasioned the deluge. The planet became entangled in the trail of the 



