138 ORIGIN OF THE EARTH 



have been before explained), it would doubtless have con- 

 densed (as we have supposed the moon to have done), in a 

 permanently oval form, whose opposite ends would, if the 

 expression may be allowed, have represented solidified 

 tides.* 



With the evolutions and condensations above supposed, or, 

 at least, with something not essentially differing from them, 

 the materials of which our earth is composed, may be sup- 

 posed to have passed out of their first or chaotic state. 



2. The SECOND stage of the earth's developments, as ob- 

 viously the next orderly stage of progression from the first, 

 was that of a spheroidal igneous nucleus. This stage, indeed, 

 commenced the moment the nucleus began to appear; for 

 then the general body, by the distinction developed in its 

 parts, began to pass out of the state of absolute chaos. It 

 may be considered that this development closed when the 

 outer limits of this igneous nucleus became distinctly defined, 

 and when its merely molten and fluid substance became fully 

 distinguished from its gaseous envelope.f 



3. The THIRD stage may be denominated the granite-aqueous, 

 it being the stage characterized by the formation of the first 

 granite crust, and by the development of the oceans by which 

 the latter was generally covered. This, completing as it did 

 the first Trinity of terrestrial developments, brought the earth 

 from a previously elastic and yielding, to a solid and perma- 



* These suggestions, tending, as they do, to an essential modification of the New- 

 tonian theory of tides, might be greatly fortified by additional considerations ; but to 

 present these in their proper force, discussions would be required which would be too 

 occult for a popular treatise. 



t The foregoing considerations in respect to the first and second stages of the earth's 

 formation, are admitted to be mainly a priori, but to those who can perceive effects 

 as involved in their causes, they will not be without weight In respect to the remain- 

 ing stages of development, we will not only have the evidence of copses, but of their 

 fjfects, as still observable in the earth's crust. 



