14:0 ORIGIN OF THE EARTH. 



times. But the mystery seems to be quite as well, if not bet- 

 ter, accounted for in the consideration that while the atmos- 

 phere was so excessively dense as it must have been while 

 loaded with so much carbon and carbonic acid, its pressure 

 must have been correspondingly great ; and it is well known 

 that every increase of atmospheric pressure is attended with an 

 increase of heat. It is not improbable, however, that both 

 of these causes had something to do in the production of the 

 superior heat of these times. 



The scene which would have been presented to a human 

 spectator, could such an one have been placed upon the sur- 

 face of the earth at this time, would have been gloomy and 

 cheerless in the extreme. He would probably at no time have 

 beheld either clouds or decided sunshine, but a dim and unde- 

 fined luminescence, caused by the sunbeams in passing athwart 

 the thick and stagnant atmosphere. No star-beam could have 

 penetrated the dense aerial envelope to relieve the gloom of 

 night ; and, for the same reason, the range of horizontal vision, 

 even at noonday, must have been confined within narrow 

 limits. All diversity of landscape must, in the earlier part 

 of this period, have been merged in one wide waste of waters. 

 This, however, was, in later times, partially relieved by exten- 

 sive districts of low, marshy land, on which the soft and suc- 

 culent vegetation grew with the rankest luxuriance. No bird 

 yet winged the air, or gladdened the forest with its song ; no 

 beast prowled through the thick jungles of fern and sigillaria, 

 and no herds lowed upon the fields of moss and equiseta; and, 

 except the rolling of the ocean waves, the plashing of the finny 

 tribe, and the occasional rumblings of subterranean fires, the 

 most profound and gloomy silence reigned over the face of the 

 globe ! 



If, therefore, in the first stage of the first Trinity of devel- 



