156 THE ORIGIN OP CREATION. 



attempts to prove this supposition on different grounds, 

 from Mayer, by saying that when we descend into the earth, 

 the atmosphere becomes gradually hotter, till supposing 

 the rate of increase to continue the same at twenty or thirty 

 miles the crust of the earth would be found red hot. Thus th 

 English commissioners have fixed four thousand feet as the 

 limit for the depth of the coal mines. The health of the colliers, 

 it is supposed, would suffer, should the hope of gain induce 

 mine owners to sink their shafts below that depth. 



The objections to this theory are very numerous, although th 

 number of hot springs, and volcanoes and earthquakes, would 

 seem to support it. The main objection is, that Herschell and 

 others have calculated the heat of the interior, from the surface 

 inwards ; they have never calculated what the effect Avould be 

 on the surface of the earth, from the amount of heat they say is 

 inside of it. If an egg shell and the meat within it, is a correct 

 illustration of the relative thickness of the crust of the earth 

 to the molten matter within, then we wonder how hot the egg 

 shell would be, if the contents were only boiling hot. Any 

 calculation at all weuld show us, that if our crust was only 

 twenty miles thick, the heat would be so intense on the surface, 

 that, far from the world being only inhabited by fishes, our 

 oceans would be dry, our river beds empty, and neither 

 man, beast, fish, or plant, could have any existence whatever. 

 The whole theory is such an untenable one, and so much 

 out of harmony with natural law, that it only remains for us to 

 give a feasible explanation of the cause of volcanoes and earth- 

 quakes, to have it rejected altogether. 



Firstly, then, with regard to Volcanoes. 



They are mountains, from the tops of which issue when in 



