182 Notice and Review of the Reliquiae Diluvianae. 
rather owe their form and figure to the shells of the fishes 
they represent: and he gravely sustains, by numerous 
reasons, the former of these opinions. 
match on fire, and ere long will be blown up with a dread- 
ful explosion, 
Robinson, a clergyman of the English established 
church, gave, in 1694, an anatomical description of the 
earth, in which he undertook to prove “ that matter at first 
consisted of innumerable particles, of divers figures, and 
different qualities, running a ree} in dark confusion till the 
world, by the infusion of a vital spirit, became a great ant 
mat, having skin, flesh, blood, &c.” In the eighth chap- 
ter of his “* Anatomy of the Earth,” he treats of *‘the bel- 
ly of the earth.” “He thinks it undeniably certain, that 
the centre of the earth contains a vast cavity of a multan- 
gular figure, “filled up with a crude and indigested matter, 
endued with several different and contrary qualities, 
which are in a continued struggle and contention among 
themselves.” hen the airy particles prevail, they 
break through the crust or skin of the earth in hurricanes; 
when the fiery particles triumph, volcanic eruptions and 
earthquakes are the consequence; and these are some- 
times so violent that “the very ribs of the earth” are 
broken ; “‘and these convulsions are as natural to the 
pressed into a prolate spheroid, just as a lemon is squeeZ” 
. See some suggestion to elucidate this subject, in. the notice of Hay- 
den’s Geological Essays, Vol. IU. p. 52, &c. of this Jogrnal.—Ep. 
