THEORY OF THE EARTH. 417 



since it is with Evidence, and evidence alone, that I 

 am concerned. And the evidence for such a fluid 

 globe is found, first, in its statical figure, and, secondly, 

 in the various geological facts, already reviewed, and 

 founded primarily on the phenomena of volcanoes, 

 which prove that the interior of the earth, beyond a 

 certain depth, is at present in a fluid condition, from 

 that heat which was once sufficient for the preceding 

 more extensive effects. 



J?nd here terminates that which is of most difficult 

 investigation in the Theory of the Earth, and which, 

 by many, will still be ranked with hypotheses. The 

 Evidence such as it is, is given : what a rational phi- 

 losophy shall pronounce on it, will always deserve at- 

 tention : the opinions of those who decide from pre- 

 judices, or under temper or defect of reasoning, may 

 be neglected. Yet the limit between such evidence 

 as this, and that of a higher order, is evanescent ; so 

 that in attempting to trace the next step, there would 

 be room for the same remarks, were it not superfluous 

 to repeat them. 



I know of no mode in which the surface of a fluid 

 globe could be consolidated, but by the radiation of 

 heat ; while, of the necessity of such a process I need 

 not again speak. The immediate result of this must 

 have been the formation of rocks on that surface; and 

 if the interior fluid does now produce the several un- : 

 stratified rocks, the first that were formed must have 

 resembled some of these, if not all. We may, not un- 

 safely, infer that they were granitic ; perceiving that 

 substances of this character have been produced 

 wherever the cooling appears to have been most gra- 

 dual. The first apparently solid globe was therefore 

 a globe of granite, or of those rocks which bear the 

 nearest crystalline analogies to it : while, if there are 



VOL. n. E E 



