388 ON THEORIES OF THE EARTH. 



mass of borrowed, or inane, or visionary matter: and 

 it" I have selected what seemed, for some reason, to 

 deserve it most, the reader will scarcely complain that 

 I have not thus occupied more of his time : the pre- 

 sent will amply justify that neglect. If I pay no re- 

 gard to their claims to priority, it is that the chrono- 

 logy of folly or error is not worth settling. 



Whether he knew it or not, the original globe of 

 La Marck was that of Chaldea, but the " monsters" 

 were monads, or organic particles ; some destined to 

 form vegetables, and others animals. The animal 

 monads, producing, first, microscopic infusoria, gradu- 

 ally acquired higher organizations, through their own 

 desires, and became, at length, the present races ; as the 

 vegetable ones, similarly, became the plants that we 

 see. Thus preceding the solid earth, marine shells 

 constructed lime, and vegetables clay, instigated by 

 the want of a soil ; while these two earths produced 

 the others ; but, whether by so desiring, is not said. 

 And thus did animals and vegetables create the earth 

 from a sphere of salt water. I have done more than 

 justice, since I have not told all, to him whom his age 

 esteemed a great Naturalist. He might have been so: 

 in empty shells. If this be Epicurism, and not disease 

 or imbecility, he should have asked himself who cre- 

 ated the salt water and the monads. But when did 

 human folly become a warning to its like ? The past 

 year has seen dust moving in fluids, and the " philo- 

 sophers" of to-day have rejoiced in new monads, un- 

 informed, alas, of their antiquity. The system of Ue 

 Maillet, copied by Darwin, is scarcely worth distin- 

 guishing, though admitting an original land : but it 

 requires little discernment in modern Epicurism, to per- 

 ceive that purpose, in some, which the folly of others 

 has, perhaps unsuspectingly, imitated. Such have been 



