CHARLES B. WARRING. 269 
them would increase, and, in fact, it has increased to its 
present limit. 
It is absolutely essential to this theory, that land and 
sea should never have changed places, a requirement 
which not very long ago would have been thought fatal 
to any theory, but which is now in accord with the be- 
lief of nearly all scientists. 
While I have been reading this paper, perhaps your 
thoughts have passed to other parts of the universe to 
inquire how facts elsewhere corroborate the theory which 
I have presented. 
There is little that we know of processes outside of our 
planet. It is, however, at least a suggestive fact that our 
earth, which was a miniature sun when the scoria was 
gathering into a mass, was also a variable star, a sub- 
ject on which we had so interesting a paper at our last 
meeting. At that time all the present ocean bottom was 
glowing with heat and light. To an observer at Mars, the 
earth would present a variation of intensity in its light, 
going through its period in about twenty-four hours. As 
the scoriaceous mass was, roughly speaking, an acute 
angled triangle with its vertex to the east, and its base 
to the west, the light diminished gradually, but increased. 
with much greater rapidity. The mode and rate of vari- 
ation would depend upon the form of the floating mass, 
—the spot as it would appear to the distant observer. 
The variation would be very great since the spot, at 
first there would be but one spot, in its most favorable 
position, would intercept rather more than one half of 
the light, and, in twelve hours more, intercept none at 
all. When afterwards, the great spot broke in two, 
and a part floated three thousand miles away, there 
would be two maxima of unequal intensity and two 
minima, also of unequal intensity. The greatest maxi- 
mum would be when what is now the Pacific basin was 
turned to the observer; this would be followed by the 
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