38 VESTIGES OE THE 



spread over the whole. Shoukl these events take place, 

 meteorological phenomena, and all the phenomena of 

 organic life, will commence, and the moon, like tlio 

 earth, will become a green and inhabited world. 



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 

 nebulous hypothesis, for here the associated facts cannot 

 be explained on any other supposition. "We have seen 

 reason to conclude that the primary condition of matter 

 was that of a diffused mass, in which the component 

 molecules were probably kept apart through the efficacy 

 of heat ; that portions of this agglomerated 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 remarkable proof of its having been in a fluid 

 state at the time when it was finally solidifying, in the 

 fact of its being bulged at the equator, the very form 

 which a soft revolving body takes, and must inevitably 

 take, under the influence of centrifugal force. This 

 bulging makes the equatorial exceed the polar diameter 

 as 230 to 229, which has been demonstrated to be pre- 

 cisely the departure from a correct sphere which might 

 be predicted from a knowledge of the amount of the mass 

 and the rate of rotation. There is an almost equally 

 distinct memorial of the original high temperature of 

 the materials, in the store of heat which still exists in 

 the interior. The immediate surface 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 



