374 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



bution of organic structures wholly at variance with existing 

 climatic relations. Many hypotheses have been advanced in 

 elucidation of so important a problem, such as the approxima- 

 tion of a comet, the altered obliquity of the ecliptic, and the 

 increased intensity of the sun's light ; but none of these have 

 satisfied at once the astronomer, the physicist, and the geo- 

 logist. I, for my part, would willingly leave undisturbed 

 the axis of the earth or the light of the sun's disk, (from 

 whose spots a celebrated astronomer explained fruitfulness 

 and failure of crops,) yet it appears to me that in every 

 planet there exist, independently of its relations to a cen- 

 tral body and its astronomical position, numerous causes 

 for the development of heat, in processes of oxidation, in 

 precipitation, in the chemically altered capacity of bodies, the 

 increase of electro -magnetic tension, and in the channels of 

 communication opened between its internal and external 

 parts. 



Wherever, in the primitive world, heat was radiated from 

 the deeply fissured crust of the earth, palms, arborescent 

 ferns, and all the animals of the torrid zone, could perhaps 

 have flourished for centuries over extensive tracts of land. 

 According to this view, which I have already published in 

 my work entitled Geognostischer Versuch uber die Lagerung 

 der Gebirgsarten in leiden Hemispharen* the temperature 

 of volcanos would be that of the interior of our earth itself, 

 and the same causes which now occasion such fearfully devas- 

 tating results, may have been able to produce, in every 

 zone, the most luxuriant vegetation on the newly oxidized 

 crust of the earth and on the deeply fissured strata of rocks. 



Should it be assumed, for the purpose of explaining the 

 wonderful distribution of tropical forms in their ancient mau- 

 solea, that the long-haired elephantine animals, which are now 

 found embedded in ice, were once indigenous to northern lati- 



* Geognostical Essay on the superposition of Rocks in both Hemi- 

 spheres. 8vo. Lond. 1803. 



