THEORY Of THE EARTH. il 



More recent Systems. 



In our own times, men of still bolder imagina- 

 tions have exercised their minds upon this great 

 subject. Some writers have revived and greatly 

 extended the ideas of Demaillet. They suppose 

 that every thing was originally fluid ; that this 

 fluid gave existence to animals, which were at 

 first of the most simple kind, such as the monads 

 and other infusory and microscopic species ; that, 

 in process of time, and by assuming different ha- 

 bits, the races of animals became complicated, and 

 assumed that diversity of nature and character 

 in which they now appear. By means of those 

 various races of animals, part of the waters of the 

 sea have gradually been converted into calcareous 

 earth ; while the vegetables, concerning the ori- 

 gin and metamorphoses of which these writers are 

 totally silent, have, on their part, converted a por- 

 tion of the same water into clay : These two 

 earths, on being stripped of the characters which 

 life had impressed upon them, are resolved, by a 

 final analysis, into silex; and hence the reason 

 that the oldest mountains are more siliceous than 

 the rest. All the solid parts of the earth, there- 

 fore, owe their existence to life, and, without life, 

 the globe would still be entirely liquid *. 



* See La Physique de Rodig. p. 106, Leipsic, 1801 ; and 



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