WORLD-SMASHIKG. 261 



inconsistent with sound dynamics as it is repugnant to common 

 sense. 



This subject suggests a similar one, which was discussed a few 

 months since at the Academy of Sciences of Paris. On January 30th 

 last M. St. Meunier read a paper on " The mode of rupture of a star, 

 from which meteors are derived." The author starts with the 

 assumption that meteors have been produced by the rupture of a 

 world, basing this assumption upon the arguments he has stated in 

 previous papers. He discards altogether Sir W. Thomson's idea of a 

 collision between two worlds, but works out a conclusion quite as 

 melancholy. 



He begins, like most other builders of cosmical theories, with the 

 hypothesis that this and all the other worlds of space began their 

 existence in a condition of nebulous infancy ; that they gradually 

 condensed into molten liquids, and then cooled down till they 

 obtained a thin outside crust of solid matter, resting upon a molten 

 globe within ; that this crust then gradually thickened as the world 

 grew older and cooled down by radiation. I will not stop to discuss 

 this nebular and cooling-down hypothesis at present, though it is but 

 fair to state that " I don't believe a bit of it." 



Taking all this for granted a considerable assumption M. St. 

 Meunier reasons very ably upon what must follow if we further 

 assume that each world is somehow supplied with air and water, and 

 that the atmosphere and the ocean of each world are limited and un- 

 connected with those of any other world, or with any general inter- 

 stellar medium. 



What, then, will happen as worlds grow old ? As they cool down, 

 they must contract ; the liquid inside can manage this without any 

 inconvenience to itself, but not so with the outer spherical shell of 

 solid matter. As the inner or hotter part of this contracts, the cool 

 outside must crumple up in order to follow it, and thus mountain 

 chains and great valleys, lesser hills and dales, besides faults and 

 slips, dykes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc., are explained. 



According to M. St. Meunier, the moon has reached a more ad- 

 vanced period of cosmical existence than the earth. She is our 

 senior ; and like the old man who shows his gray hairs and tottering 

 limbs to inconsiderate youth, she shines a warning upon our gay 

 young world, telling her that 



Let her paint an Inch thick, to this favor she must come 



that the air and ocean must pass away, that all the living creatures 

 of the earth must perish, and the desolation shall come about in this 

 wise. 



At present, the interior of our planet is described as a molten fluid, 

 with a solid crust outside. As the world cools down with age, this 

 crast will thicken and crack, and crack again, as the lower part con- 

 tracts. This will form rainures, i.e long narrow chasms, of vast 

 depths, which, like those on the moon, will traverse, without devia- 

 tion, the mountains, valleys, plains, and ocean-beds ; the waters will 

 fall into these, and, after violent catastrophes, arising from their 

 boiling by contact with the hot interior, they will finally disappear 

 from the surface, and become absorbed in the pores of the vastly 

 thickened earth-crust, and in the caverns, cracks, and chasms which 

 the rending contraction will open in the interior. These cavities will 



