24 HISTORY OF 



of the earth, he supposes to have produced, to a 

 certain depth, a chaos entirely resembling that 

 described by the poets, surrounding the solid con- 

 tents of the earth, which still continued unchang- 

 ed in the midst, making a great burning globe of 

 more than two thousand leagues in diameter. 

 This surrounding chaos, however, was far from 

 being solid: he resembles it to a dense though 

 fluid atmosphere, composed of substances min- 

 gled, agitated, and shocked against each other ; 

 and in this disorder he describes the earth to have 

 been just at the eve of creation,. 



But upon its orbit being then changed, when 

 it was more regularly wheeled round the sun, 

 every thing took its proper place ; every part of 

 the surrounding fluid then fell into a situation, in 

 proportion as it was light or heavy. The middle, 

 or central part, which always remained unchang- 

 ed, still continued so, retaining a part of that heat 

 which it received in its primeval approaches to- 

 wards the sun; which heat, he calculates, may 

 continue for about six thousand years. Next to 

 this fell the heavier parts of the chaotic atmos- 

 phere, which serve to sustain the lighter : but as 

 in descending they could not entirely be separat- 

 ed from many watery parts, with which they were 

 intimately mixed, they drew down a part of these 

 also with them ; and these could not mount again 

 after the surface of the earth was consolidated : 

 they, therefore, surrounded the heavy first de- 

 scending parts, in the same manner as these sur- 

 round the central globe. Thus the entire body 

 of the earth is composed internally of a great 



