1865.] Cosmical and Geological Philosophy. 127 



these views, though, with respect to the former, in a very different manner 

 from that hitherto accepted. 



The long-continued study of Meteorites and of the phenomena which 

 attend their fall, affected by the consideration of the probable synthesis of 

 ponderable matter in the Sun, and since the conclusions of Kirchhoff have 

 been announced the special study of Solar Physics and Chemistry in con- 

 nexion with both subjects, appear to the author to justify him in entertain- 

 ing the hope that he may thus have succeeded by means, partly, of a 

 new deductive cosmical hypothesis submitted for verification, and partly 

 by uniting, and in some cases newly interpreting, preceding inductions on 

 particular points of their physical history in effecting at least the ap- 

 proximate solution of the problem of the Origin and Formation of 

 Meteorites, which has been sought by philosophers from the time of the 

 communication to the Royal Society, now sixty-three years since, of 

 Edward Howard's paper, demonstrating their peculiar nature and establish- 

 ing the reality of their fall*. 



The succeeding section of the paper is headed " Original Formation of 

 the Planets : Origin of the Primitive Heat of the Earth, causes of its 

 Permanence and Invariability ; the Earth not a cooling body" In this 

 it is represented that the results of modern science conspire to prove that 

 we must look to causes now in operation as those which have produced the 

 planets. If as first evinced by Mr. G. Poulett Scrope, with respect chiefly 

 to volcanic and plutonic action, and secondly, but from a wider induction 

 by Sir C. Lyell they are sufficient to account for the phenomena of its 

 surface and crust, as made known by Geology, it follows, by parity of rea- 

 soning, that they will be sufficient to account also for its original production. 

 The only known phenomenon in which the process of the formation of the 

 Earth as a planet is actually observed, is that of the fall of Meteorites upon 

 it, by which its magnitude is augmented, and that by the addition of mate- 

 rials homogeneous with those of its existing elementary constitution, being 

 chiefly those chemical elements which are present in the greatest quantity 

 in the Earth's crust, and seem to be most essential to its constitution. The 

 characteristic presence of iron in both has been already adverted to. Ac- 

 cording to the principle of the adequacy of Existing Causes, therefore, we 

 must conclude that the fall of Meteorites is a continuation or a residue of 

 the process of formation of our planet, and that the Earth was originally 

 produced by the aggregation and coalescence of Meteorites, or of greater 

 masses into which they had previously coalesced. 



Agreeably to the law of the Conservation of Energy and to the dynamical 

 theory of heat, the enormous original velocity of the Meteorites being dimi- 

 nished by their collision and coalescence, great part of the mechanical force 

 of their motion would be reconverted into heat, and become eventually 

 the "primitive" internal heat of the Earth, for which it would appear that 

 what may be reasonably characterized as a vera causa is thus supplied. 



* Read February 25, 1802 ; published in the < Philosophical Transactions ' for that 

 year, Part I. 



