AND OF THE OTHER BODIES OF SPACE. 23 



ring and the inner mount ; in one case, this is reckoned to be 

 not less than 22,000 feet, or twice the height of .ZEtna. 



These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can 

 be at present a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem 

 to declare that it never can become so. But it is far from un- 

 likely that the elements which seem wanting may be only in 

 combinations different from those which exist here, and may 

 yet be developed as we here find them. Seas may yet fill the 

 profound hollows of the surface ; an atmosphere may spread 

 over the whole. Should these events take place, meteorolo- 

 gical phenomena, and all the phenomena of organic life, will 

 commence, and the moon, like the earth, will become a green 

 and inhabited world. ( 8 ) 



It is unavoidably held as a strong proof in favour of any 

 hypothesis, when all the relative phenomena are in harmony 

 with it. This is eminently the case with the Laplacian cos- 

 mogony, for here the associated facts cannot be explained on 

 any other supposition. AVe have seen reason to believe that 

 the primary condition of matter was that of a diffused mass, 

 in which the component molecules were kept apart through 

 the efficacy of heat ; that portions of this matter agglome- 

 rated into suns, which threw off planets ; that these planets 

 were at first very much diffused, but gradually contracted 

 by cooling to their present dimensions. Now, as to our 

 own globe, there is a remarkably distinct memorial of the 

 supposed high temperature of the materials, in the store of 

 heat which still exists in the interior. The immediate sur- 

 face of the earth, be it observed, exhibits only the temperature 

 which might be expected to be imparted to such materials by 

 the heat of the sun. There is a point a very short way down, 

 but varying in different climes, where all effect from the sun's 

 rays ceases. Then commences a temperature from an entirely 

 different cause, one which evidently has its source in the 

 interior of the earth, and which regularly increases as we 

 descend to greater and greater depths, the rate of increment 

 being, in general, about one degree Fahrenheit for every fifty 

 feet ; and of this high temperature there are other evidences 



