110 RANTS UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



rotation of the planets round their axes, in the original 

 state of their first formation, coincided pretty exactly with 

 the plane of their annual path, and that there have been 

 causes at work which have pushed this axis out of its first 

 position. A heavenly body which passes out of its first 

 fluid condition into the solid state, when it develops itself 

 completely in this way, undergoes a great alteration in the 

 regularity of its surface. This becomes fixed and hardened, 

 whereas the deeper materials have not yet sunk sufficiently 

 in accordance with the ratio of their specific gravity. The 

 lighter kinds of matter, which were intermingled in the 

 common mass, ultimately find their place after they have 

 separated from the others beneath the outermost part, the 

 now fixed crust, and produce the great cavities which 

 from causes which it would take too long to state here 

 are found to be largest and broadest under or near the 

 equator; and into these the said crust ultimately sinks, 

 and produces thereby manifold inequalities in mountains 

 and valleys. Now, if the surface became uneven in this 

 way, as must manifestly have been the case with the 

 Earth, the Moon, and Venus, it cannot have been able 

 any longer to maintain on all sides the equilibrium of the 

 revolution in its axial rotation. Certain protuberant parts 

 of considerable mass, which found no others on the 

 opposite side that could furnish a counteraction to their 

 strain, must then displace the axis of rotation and tend to 

 put it into a new position, around which the matter of the 

 rotating body would be kept in equilibrium. The same 

 cause, then, which in the completion of the formation of 

 a heavenly body has changed its surface from a level state 

 into broken inequalities that general cause which is dis- 

 cerned in all the heavenly bodies which can be distinctly 



