132 Notices respecting New Boohs. 



difference of temperature which acts in the opposite direction. He 

 even suggests that the pronounced flattening of the poles of the 

 planet Jupiter may be caused by the excess of salinity of its equa- 

 torial water. His conclusions on the Equilibrium of the Seas are 

 summed up in these words : — " We see then, without striving at 

 too much precision, that to a diminution of the density of the 

 seas corresponds a lowering of their surface" This is certainly the 

 opposite of what we should expect, but how there could exist any 

 great permanent difference of level in a fluid having free com- 

 munication it is difficult to understand. This great principle of 

 the equilibrium of the- seas being established to the author's satis- 

 faction, he goes on to explain the origin of the Quaternary Rains. 

 Most English geologists are disbelievers in the excessive rainfall 

 supposed by some to have distinguished the Quaternary climate, 

 but the author takes the great precipitation as an established fact, 

 and proceeds to explain it, as he seems to imagine, " without 

 hypothesis." 



The explanation is the greater prevalence of Volcanic energy 

 from the Tertiary period gradually diminishing to the present time. 

 These Tertiary and Quaternary volcanoes emitted vast quantities 

 of steam saturating the atmosphere with vapour, which, being con- 

 densed by admixture of air from the seas, supplied the enormous 

 rainfall M. Hermite considers necessary to hollow out the river- 

 valleys as they now exist. These great rains were the cause of vast 

 detrital deposits, which, collecting in basins, pressed down the 

 Earth by their weight, as supposed by many other geologists of the 

 present day. M. Hermite, who disbelieves in central heat, is, how- 

 ever, singular in accounting for the increase of heat downwards 

 in the Earth's crust by the mechanical work done on the lower 

 beds by the bulging caused by these sedimentary loads. Another 

 and important effect of this bulging is to create faults and fissures, 

 which allow the sea-water to penetrate to and ignite hypothetical 

 beds of iron pyrites, creating volcanoes, which again are the cause 

 of the immense Quaternary Rainfall, and so on ad infinitum, in a 

 sort of cycle of perpetual motion. The later phenomena of 

 Quaternary times, such as parallel terraces or raised beaches, are 

 accounted for by the author's great principle of the equilibrium of 

 the seas. The Quaternary precipitation being excessive reduced the 

 density of the polar water. Every such variation made itself felt 

 by the surface of the sea sinking when the water was fresher, and 

 therefore less dense, or rising when or where more saline and 

 denser. The parallel terraces, which are frequent at the poles and 

 absent at the equator, are supposed to be records of the changes in 

 the equilibrium of the seas. 



The whole plan and scope of the work is so at variance with 

 what English geologists have been taught to consider the true prin- 

 ciples of Geology, that it would be a waste of space to give further 

 examples of what the author perhaps is alone in thinking is an 

 explanation of the Quaternary Epoch without hypothesis. 



