THE REIGN OF UNIVERSAL WINTER. 407 



year and every day witnesses the dissipation of terrestrial 

 warmth. While we ponder the great fact, the world is 

 growing cold beneath our feet. The current of events is 

 carrying us inevitably to a state of total refrigeration. 

 Perhaps the mountains will have been leveled first, and the 

 continents swallowed up in the sea. Perhaps the volcano 

 will have been first extinguished, and the earthquake will 

 have lain down to its final slumber. Buffon imagined that 

 the final refrigeration of the earth would introduce the rig- 

 ors of perpetual winter, and render our planet uninhabita- 

 ble. Though more recent investigators have asserted that 

 that event would only reduce our earth's surface tempera- 

 ture one fortieth of its present amount, it seems difficult to 

 rest upon that conclusion. The interior of the earth is 

 probably half as hot as the sun. The earth's molten core 

 is separated from us by not more than a hundred miles of 

 rocky crust. The glowing sun is a million times farther re- 

 moved, and yet, it is alleged, yields forty times the warmth 

 which we derive from the nearer heat. In face of the tes- 

 timony of figures, it is scarcely possible to doubt that the 

 final cooling of our earth will exert a greater influence 

 upon its surface conditions than these philosophers have 

 dreamed. 



