ON GEOLOGICAL TIME. 



quoted the grand theorem at which they arrived, 

 did not perceive that exclusion. English philoso- 

 phers and naturalists might surely have taken 

 warning from Newton's simple brief decisive 

 statement, " major a autem planetarum etcometarum 

 corpora motils suos et progressives et circulares, 

 in spatiis minus resistentibus factos, conservant 

 dintius;" 1 and have at least to some degree 

 limited and qualified the expressions we so often 

 meet in their popular writings, implying a 

 perpetuity oi the " existing order," past and 

 future. 



5. Laplace was perfectly aware of the existence 

 of resistance to fluid motion. In his theory of 

 the tides, he points out most distinctly that if 

 oscillation were established on the surface of the 

 ocean oscillation on a grand scale affecting the 

 oceans the waters of the Atlantic, for instance, 

 swelling up, and those of the Pacific shrinking 

 down, time about that if such an oscillation were, 

 by any force made to commence, then, in a very 

 short time, he says " probably in a few months," 



1 Principia. "Explanation of First Law of Motion." 



