340 Ampere's Theory of the Funnadon of the Globe, 



We now propose to lay before our readers some extracts 

 from an article by the pen of Monsieur Roulin, contained in a 

 French periodical, which professes to give an abstract of the 

 views of that original and almost universal genius, Monsieur 

 Ampere, on the subject of the Formation of the Globe. 



M. Ampere sets out by adopting the hypothesis of Hers- 

 chell, who imagined the matter composing the planets to have 

 been deposited from a nebulous condition, having existed in the 

 first place in a gaseous state, and gradually concreting into a 

 solid. 



Herschell had observed, that amongst the nebulce some dis- 

 play only a diffused and homogeneous light, analogous to that 

 exhibited by the tails of comets ; whilst others exhibit in this 

 light brilliant points, which seem to shew that the particles of 

 gas have begun to unite into liquid or solid nuclei. 



He had moreover remarked, that the brilliancy of these points 

 augmented in proportion as the diffused light diminished in in- 

 tensity ; and hence he naturally concluded, that these differen- 

 ces of appearance corresponded with the different phases through 

 which a world passes during the progress of its formation. 



As a naturalist, in order to give the history of an oak, need 

 not follow any indkidual tree through the long period of its ex- 

 istence, but is satisfied with surveying a forest, in order to ob- 

 serve oaks at one time in all the conditions through which they 

 successively pass, from the first development of their cotyledons 

 up to the period of their decrepitude and death ; so the astro- 

 nomer, finding in the heavens neiulcB representing all the diffe- 

 rent stages of the formation of a planet, may fairly deduce from 

 them the successive steps by which each must have passed, or is 

 destined to pass, in order to arrive at the condition of a world 

 similar to our own. 



Granting such to have been the state of things, that is, admit- 

 ting that all bodies, whether simple or compound, that have con- 

 tributed towards the formation of our planetary system, and in 

 particular of the earth, were originally in a gaseous condition, 

 it will follow that their temperature at this period was more ex- 

 alted than that at which the least volatile of all these bodies 

 would remain in a liquid state. 



Now, the first deposit produced would probably consist of 



