SUBTERRANEAN CHEMICAL FORCES. 405 



all of them have been elevated by submarine 

 volcanos. 



All the chemical and geological operations of 

 our planet would seem to be in proportion to the 

 energy of solar radiation. Within the tropical 

 regions, the aggregate quantity of earthy and 

 metallic matter conveyed from the interior of the 

 earth in a state of chemical solution by springs, 

 is immense. The amount of evaporation and 

 rain being great, the rivers are large, and rapidly 

 destroy rocks, hills, and mountains, by mechani- 

 cal agency, which are transported to lakes and 

 seas, that are rapidly filled up by fluviatile de- 

 posits of sand, gravel, clay, pebbles, boulders, 

 &c. forming new lands. The waters of the ocean, 

 that find their way to the interior are warm, and 

 rapidly oxidize its metals and other minerals, by 

 which a corresponding amount of heat is disen- 

 gaged. 



Thus it is evident that all the phenomena of 

 meteorology, chemistry, and geology, are re- 

 solvable into the agency of caloric, or thermo- 

 electric power. If rocks and hills are dissolved 

 by running water, and transported to lakes and 

 seas, caloric is the universal solvent. And here 

 must end for ever the long and idle controversy 

 between the Plutonian and Wernerian geolo- 

 gists. If caloric be indispensable to fluidity and 

 solution, it is as necessary to the formation of 

 sedimentary rocks as to the generation of granite, 



