228 Natural History. [Chap. IIL 



cession of walers from seas hitherto inland, may 

 have crushed down other inferior vauUs, and finally 

 settled its lowest degradations. As the land be- 

 came thus elevated above the bed of the ocean, the 

 cold became more intense, the vicissitudes of cli- 

 mate were more severely felt, and the life of man 

 suffered a proportionate abbreviation. 



Mr. Howard was succeeded by M. P. Bertrand, 

 of France, who next proposed a theory, much less 

 philosophical, and in every respect unworthy of a 

 sober mind*. This wild and impious theorist con- 

 tends that water was the original substance of our 

 earth, but that this water, before motion and heat 

 were communicated to it, was a solid mass of ice. 

 Such was the condition of the globe we inhabit, 

 when one of th^ larger order of comets, after long- 

 wandering about, finally ended its career, and ful- 

 filled its destination, by striking this frozen mass, 

 breaking it in pieces^ and mixing its own materials 

 with those of the till then lethargic body. ' These 

 fragments acquired by this impulsion a common 

 projectile motion, in the same plane, and in the 

 same direction. The light, heat, and life, brought 

 by this energetic comet, mixing with the original 

 ic<.', formed new combinations, afforded causes of in- 

 ternal motion, and began, by these means, a new^ or- 

 der of things, wiiicli M. Bertrand calls vital and orga- 

 nic constitution, and which he su])poses to be diffe- 

 rent in e\ery planet, since the density is different. 

 The ice, by mc^ans of heat as a solvent, being re- 

 duced to primordial matter, all ancient combina- 



* Noiivcaux Principes de Geologic, par P. Bertrand^ &c. 8vo. 

 V:irh, i;n8. 



