SCIENCE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY 



which but the span of two human lives before would 

 have brought their enunciators to the stake were now 

 pronounced not impious, but sublime. 



in 



One might naturally suppose that the science of the 

 earth, which lies at man's feet, would at least have kept 

 pace with the science of distant stars. But perhaps the 

 very obviousness of the phenomena delayed the study 

 of the crust of the earth. It is the unattainable that 

 allures and mystifies and enchants the developing mind. 

 The proverbial child spurns its toys and cries for the 

 moon. 



So in those closing days of the eighteenth centurj 7 ", 

 when astronomers had gone so far towards explaining 

 the mysteries of the distant portions of the universe, 

 we find a chaos of opinion regarding the structure and 

 formation of the earth. Guesses were not wanting to 

 explain the formation of the world, it is true, but, with 

 one or two exceptions, these are bizarre indeed. One 

 theory supposed the earth to have been at first a solid 

 mass of ice, which became animated only after a comet 

 had dashed against it. Other theories conceived the 

 original globe as a mass of water, over which floated 

 vapors containing the solid elements, which in due time 

 were precipitated as a crust upon the waters. In a 

 word, the various schemes supposed the original mass to 

 have been ice, or water, or a conglomerate of water and 

 solids, according to the random fancies of the theorists; 

 and the final separation into land and water was con- 

 ceived to have taken place in all the ways which fancy, 

 quite unchecked by any tenable data, could invent. 

 B 17 



