CHARLES B. WARRING. 263 
phere as then existed, and with such enormous tempera- 
tures, must have been exceedingly destructive. 
Another important force came from the rotation of the 
earth. Every one that has seen water fly from the face 
of a grindstone, has noticed, when the centre of the 
face was the highest part, the water heaped up there be- 
fore it began to fly off. For similar reasons the floating 
ing débris moved toward, the equator. As in every 
cauldron of boiling matter the scum takes a form pecu- 
liar to itself ; so here, the scum, or slag, took some form, 
it may have been perhaps a girdle, or equatorial ring, 
and in some cases it might remain a ring, and so per- 
-haps it has, in other worlds, but in ours, it did not; it 
was broken in some way, and probably by the disrup- 
tive forces of which I have spoken. Then began a new 
process ; there was a drawing together of the ring by its 
own attraction. This probably occurred when the ring 
was yet narrow, and while yet a great part of the float- 
ing scorie had not been gathered in. Around the poles, 
or rather at the poles, the centrifugal force was zero. 
Going from them, it increased slowly, reaching its 
maximum effect in latitude 45°. Hence there were 
probably large masses around the poles even after the 
ring had been formed. If fragments disrupted by seis- 
mic forces, floated to the central mass, and chanced to 
strike it near its southwestern and northwestern 
shoulders, they would give it a rude, triangular form 
which subsequent additions might readily develop into 
the great triangular mass which seems to have been the 
antecedent of the present continental masses. 
This immense floating island had a slow westward 
motion caused by the convective currents. The upper 
or surface material descending, lost a part of its east- 
ward motion, and when it returned to the surface, it 
came with a diminished eastward motion, and hence, in 
reference to the earth as a whole, it had a slow west- 
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