458 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vou. VIII. 
covered the face of the deep,”’ and if the theory I am dealingwith approaches. 
the truth, you see that it must of necessity have been so. In fact it could 
not have been otherwise. ime passes. The temperature continues 
falling, and in the upper regions of the atmosphere the cloud vapour con- 
denses into drops of water which soon work their way to the surface of the 
earth; that operation once commenced will go on with increasing energy, 
and by the contact of the colder water with the warmer surface of the 
earth, a war of elements would be inaugurated, which has played such an 
important part-in reducing the earth to a habitable condition. ‘The sur- 
face cracks by the contact of the cooler water, and as the water percolates 
the thin shell, puny explosions and eruptions are produced, which were 
the sure precursors of those terrible catastrophes we so often hear of in 
these later days. Precipitation goes on, and as the surface of the earth 
must still be without deep ocean caves or river channels the entire surface 
will be covered with water. Meanwhile the water forces its way deeper 
down through the thickening crust and more violent eruptions occur, 
which ultimately prepare beds and channels for the universal waters, 
which again accords with the old Book, “And the spirit of God moved 
upon the face of the waters’’ which rushed into the newly formed recep- 
tacles made by the volcanic upheavals, ‘‘forming seas,’ and as a matter 
of course ‘‘the dry land appeared.’’ Rain, ages no doubt of rain, would 
naturally modify the density of the overhanging pall of cloud so that faint 
streaks of light might have been seen running from east to west over the 
equatorial zone. (It is supposed that the planet Jupiter is now in a state 
analogous to that I am now supposing the earth was passing through.) — 
From the constant rain the cloud covering the earth would get thinner 
and thinner until the light would illumine the entire globe, but the face of 
the sun cannot as yet be discerned (such was the light the old historian 
regarded as a light preceding the creation of the sun). Finally the cloud 
breaks, and the sun appears, next the moon, and then the stars also. 
Then in the infantile conception of preadolescent man these luminaries 
were first created. It seems passing strange that in these modern days 
men should have ‘found it expedient to invent a phosphorescent light to 
fill the gap, for everything seems to be going forward in such an orderly 
and natural way. ‘‘It’s all right with the world.” ‘The old writer was. 
not far out when he said ‘‘the waters brought forth fish.’” We may reason- 
ably suppose that had they been furnished in those days with our present 
day facilities they would have discovered that long before the advent of 
fish the waters had brought forth thousands of varieties of infusoria, 
animalcule and algae to supply the coming species with the means of 
sustenance even if they had not got down to amoeba and protoplasm. 
Meanwhile the land brings forth the primitive forms of flora, “‘the tiny 
