1825.] Climate of the Antediluvian World. 107 



able to reason to admit that the great First Cause which distri- 

 buted through the immensity of space the primordia of so many 

 worlds, would employ the simplest, and at the same time the 

 most effectual means for accomplishing the ultimate purpose and 

 end. There is no necessity to imagine an ocean already formed 

 full of saline parts which held the earths in solution, and which 

 it was to deposit by subsequent evaporation. The purer the 

 element, the more rapid and effectual would its first action be ; 

 but then as a necessary result, a crystallized coat being thus 

 formed, a stop was put to the further conflagration and oxidation 

 of the metallic nucleus, except in a iaw spots where rents and 

 fissures occurred, which would admit either water or air to the 

 central mass. The time was now arrived at which the element- 

 ary water became fully saturated with every kind of soluble 

 oxide, whether earthy or alkaline. Its impregnation with these 

 bodies, therefore, was the immediate consequence of its first 

 action on the metallic mass, and its subsequent deposits can be 

 accounted for as a series of natural events. 



Before proceeding any further, I think it right to state, that 

 this hypothesis concerning the cause of the central heat, was 

 first started, as far as ray reading goes, by James Smithson, Esq. 

 who, in a short introduction to a paper delivered to the Royal 

 Society on the Analysis of a Sahne Substance from Vesuvius, 

 published in vol. 103, part 2, of the Transactions of that Society, 

 advanced the opinion as being founded on Sir H. Davy's disco- 

 veries ; he appears to have been satisfied with merely throwing 

 out the idea, and to have totally abandoned its development. 

 Mr. Smithson's opinion and the grounds for it are so shortly but 

 correctly expressed, that I request permission to insert them 

 here. 



" The existence (says Mr. S.) in the skies of planetary bodies 

 which seem to be actually burning, and the appearances of ori- 

 ginal fire discernible on our globe, 1 have conceived to be 

 mutually corroborative of each other ; and at the same time when 

 no answers could be given to the most essential objections to 

 the hypothesis, the mass of facts in favour of it fully justified, I 

 thought, the inference, that our habitation is an extinct comet or 

 sun." 



" The mighty difficulties which formerly assailed this opinion, 

 great modern discoveries have dissipated. Acquainted now 

 that the bases of alkalies and earths are metals eminently oxida- 

 ble, we are no longer embarrassed either for the pabulum of the 

 inflammation, or to account for the products of it." 



" In the primitive strata, we behold the result of the combus- 

 tion. In them we see the oxide collected on the surface of the 

 calcining mass, first melted by the heat, then by its increase 

 arresting further combination, and extinguishing the fires which 

 generated it, and, in fine, becoming solid and crystallized 



