212 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



of other parts to exist, all move toward their common center; that the air being a fluid 

 whose parts repel each other, though drawn to the common center by their gravity, 

 would be densest toward the center and rarer as more remote; consequently all 

 matters lighter than the central part of that air and immersed in it would recede 

 from the center and rise till they arrived at that region of the air which was of the 

 same specific gravity with themselves where they would rest; while other matter 

 mixed with the lighter air would descend, and the two meeting would form the 

 shell of the first earth, leaving the upper atmosphere quite clear. The original 

 movement of the parts toward their common center would naturally form a whirl 

 there, which would continue in the turning of the new-formed globe upon its axis, 

 and the greatest diameter of the shell would be in its equator. If by any accident 

 afterwards the axis should be changed, the dense internal fluid by altering its form 

 must burst the shell and throw all its substance into the confusion in which we 

 find it. 



Again, in a letter to Mr. Bodoin, under date of 1790, he said: 



Let me add another question or two, not relating, indeed, to magnetism, but, how- 

 ever, to the theory of the earth. 



Is not the finding of great quantities of shells and bones of animals (natural to hot 

 climates) in the cold ones of our present world some proof that its present poles have 

 been changed? Is not the supposition that the poles have been changed the easiest 

 way of accounting for the deluge by getting rid of the old difficulty how to dispose 

 of its waters after it was over? Since, if the poles were again to be changed and 

 placed in the present equator, the sea would fall there about 15 miles in height and 

 rise as much in the present polar regions, and the effect would be proportionable if 

 the new poles were placed anywhere between the present and the equator. 



Does not the apparent wrack of the surface of this globe, thrown up into long 

 ridges of mountains, with strata in various proportions, make it probable that its 

 internal mass is a fluid, but a fluid so dense as to float the heaviest of our substances? 

 Do we know the limit of condensation air is capable of ? Supposing it to grow denser 

 within the surface in the same proportion nearly as we find it does without, at what 

 depth may it be equal in density with gold? 



Can we easily conceive how the strata of the earth could have been so deranged 

 if it had not been a mere shell supported by a heavier fluid? Would not such a 

 supposed internal fluid globe be immediately sensible of a change in the situation of 

 the earth's axis, alter its form, and thereby burst the shell and throw up parts of it 

 above the rest? 



As if we would alter the proportion of the fluid contained in the shell of an egg 

 and place its longest diameter where its shortest now is the shell must break if the 

 whole internal substance were as solid and hard as the shell. 



Might not a wave*by any means raised in this supposed internal ocean of extremely 

 dense fluid, raise in some degree as it passes the present shell of incumbent earth 

 and break it in some places, as in earthquakes? And may not the progress of such 

 wave and the disorders it occasions among the solids of the shell account for the 

 rumbling sound being first heard at a distance, augmenting as it approaches, ami 

 gradually "lying away as it proceeds? A circumstance observed by the inhabitants of 

 South America in their last great earthquake — that noise coming from a place some 

 degrees norrh of Lima and being traced by enquiry quite down to Buenos Ayres, 



proceeding regularly from north to south at the rate of leagues per minute, as I 



was informed by a very ingenious Peruvian whom 1 met in Paris. 



