WAVE or HIGH WATER. 315 



conditions of heat, successively assume the solid, liquid, or 

 gaseous state without undergoing chemical change. 



This universal threefold relation of terrestrial matter 

 points strongly towards the simple and natural hypothesis 

 that the causal laws which now regulate these interchanges 

 of state are the reflex of fundamental laws underlying the 

 entire constitution of matter in the solar system. 



Passing over the possible relation of the first land-up- 

 heaval to the changes recorded in geology, through suc- 

 cessive disintegrations and reintegrations of the three 

 normal states of matter, and the consequent formation of 

 heterogeneous solids, liquids, and gases, the differential 

 force arising from that upheaval would be the initiating 

 cause in the phenomenon of the evaporation of fluid matter 

 whereby water is lifted up from ocean- surfaces in a com- 

 minuted state to infiltrate the lower regions of the atmo- 

 sphere, thus forming an attenuated vapour-ocean by means 

 of which land-areas are in some small degree compensated 

 for the entire denudation of their normal water covering. 

 This vapour-ocean constitutes an intermediate state of 

 matter — a sort of compromise between the fluid and gaseous 

 states determined by reactions arising out of abnormal 

 contact. It therefore necessarily stands in relations of 

 unstable equilibrium towards other states at all surfaces of 

 contact. 



By interactions arising thereout, the simple static con- 

 ditions of force existing prior to land-upheaval are now 

 partly replaced by more complex phases of force ; and thus 

 light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, which are expres- 

 sions of these complex phases, have their root in local 

 reactions between unstable states of terrestrial matter at 

 surfaces of abnormal contact, these reactions attaining 

 their maximum value at the surface of the earth, where 

 heterogeneous forms of matter in contact, but not in 

 stable equilibrium, are together brought under the tension 



