ILLUSTRATIONS (51). TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH. 267 



more rapid, the more tumultuous, and the more uncrystalline 

 would they have been. Such a sudden liberation of caloric 

 from the indurating crust of the earth, independent of the 

 latitude, and the position of the earth's axis, might indeed 

 occasion local elevations of temperature in the atmosphere, 

 which would influence the distribution of plants. The 

 same cause might also occasion a kind of porosity which 

 seems to be indicated by many enigmatical geological phe- 

 nomena in floetz rocks. I have developed my conjectures 

 on this subject in detail in a small memoir on primitive 

 porosity.* According to the views I have more recently 

 adopted, it appears to me that the variously shattered and 

 fissured earth, with its fused interior, may long have continued 

 in the primeval period, to impart to its oxidised surface a 

 high degree of temperature, independent of its position with 

 respect to the sun and to latitude. What an influence would 

 not, for instance, be exercised for ages to come on the climate 

 of Germany by an open fissure a thousand fathoms in depth, 

 extending from the Adriatic Gulf to the northern coast? 

 Although in the present condition of the earth, long-continued 

 radiation has almost entirely restored the stable equilibrium 

 of temperature first calculated by Fourier in his Theorie 

 analytique de la Chaleur, and the outer atmosphere is now 

 only brought into direct communication with the molten 

 interior of the earth, by means of the insignificant openings of 

 a few volcanoes ; yet in the primitive condition of our planet, 

 this interior emitted hot streams of air into the atmosphere 

 through the various clefts and fissures formed by the fre- 

 quently recurring foldings (or corrugations) of the mountain 

 strata. This emission was wholly independent of latitude. 

 Every newly formed planet must thus in its earliest condition 

 have regulated its own temperature, which was, however, 

 subsequently changed and determined by its position in rela- 

 tion to the central body, the sun. The moon's surface also 

 exhibits traces of this reaction of the interior upon the crust. 

 (11) p. 218 " The mountain-declivities of the most southern 



parts of Mexico" 



The spherical greenstone in the mountain district of Gua- 

 * See my work, Versuche uber die chemische Zersetzung des Luft* 

 kreises, 1799, p. 177; and Moll's Jahrbucher der Berg- und Hi'Mei* 

 Icunde, 1797, p. 234. 



