THE PRE- ADAMITE EARTH. 



habitation of man and the contemporaneous tribes of animals, 

 cannot fail to be a subject of interest the most exciting and 

 profound. In our Tract on the " Crust of the ^Earth," some 

 glimpses of this pre-Adamite chronology were disclosed. "We 

 purpose at present to resume the subject with more system and 

 detail, assuming that our readers have already rendered them- 

 selves familiar with 4he facts, phenomena, and principles which 

 were there stated and explained. 



187. Before we enter upon this curious narrative, however, it 

 will be useful to recapitulate the great facts which will be 

 brought in more detail before the reader. 



The globe, consisting originally of matter in a state of igneous 

 fusion, being put in a state of rotation, assumed, as a necessary 

 mechanical consequence of that motion, the form which it still 

 retains, called in geometry that of an oblate spheroid, flattened at 

 the poles and bulging out at the equator; the sections made 

 by planes passing through the axis of rotation being therefore 

 ellipses, the longer axes of which are diameters of the equator. 

 We have shown in former Tracts that the eccentricity or degree 

 of the oval shape which characterises these ellipses depends imme- 

 diately upon the velocity of rotation, so much so that, by mere 

 mathematical calculation, the form of the ellipse has been deduced 

 d priori from that velocity, and the form thus calculated has been 

 found to correspond with the actual shape of the earth. 



By the gradual process of cooling produced by radiation the 

 surface of the ear.th became solidified, a thin skin of solid matter 

 being first formed upon it, which, as the cooling continued, became 

 gradually thicker, the increase of thickness being produced by 

 more and more solidified matter collected on its inner surface. 

 This thickness may be said therefore to have increased from 

 the outside inwards. At first the temperature was necessarily 

 such that water could not exist upon it in the liquid state, 

 but according as the temperature of the surface became gradually 

 lower, the aqueous vapour till then sustained in the atmosphere 

 was more or less condensed and precipitated, forming upon it an 

 ocean of uniform depth extending over the entire surface. 



188. If no convulsion had taken place the earth would have 

 continued in this state. It would have been one universal ocean 

 undi versified by land, and the human race could never have 

 existed upon it. It follows, therefore, that before terrestrial tribes 

 were created the globe must have been of necessity the theatre of 

 various catastrophes, by which the land was raised above the 

 waters, and by which a state of things was established, more or 

 less analogous to that which geography now presents to us. It 

 was necessary, in a word, that the "dry land should appear." 

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