48 



THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. I. 



15. Gaseous state of the earth. — Though it may be 

 difficult to the unscientific inquirer to comprehend that our 

 planet once existed in a gaseous state, this difficulty will 

 vanish upon considering the nature of the changes to which 

 all the materials composing the earth are constantly sub- 

 jected. Water offers a familiar example of a substance 

 existing on the surface of the globe, in the separate states of 

 rock, fluid, and vapour ; for water consolidated into ice is as 

 much a rock as granite or the adamant, and, as we shall 

 hereafter have occasion to remark, has the power of pre- 

 serving for an indefinite period the remains of any animals 

 and vegetables imbedded therein. Yet simply upon an in- 

 crease of temperature, the glaciers of the Alps, and the icy 

 pinnacles of the Arctic circles, disappear ; and by a degree 

 of heat still higher, would be resolved into vapour ; and by 

 other agencies might be separated into two invisible gases — 



bable. If I may venture to utter my own impression, I must profess 

 it as the most reasonable supposition, and the correlate of the nebular 

 theory, that God originally gave being to the primordial elements of 

 things, the very small number of simple bodies, endowing each with 

 its own wonderful properties. Then, that the actions of those properties, 

 in the ways which his wisdom ordained and which we call laws, pro- 

 duced, and is still producing all the forms and changes of organic and 

 inorganic nature ; and that the series is destined to proceed, in com- 

 binations and multiplications ever new, without limit of space or end 

 of duration, to the eternal display of His glory." 



These remarks may be regarded as a philosophical enunciation of 

 the hypothesis that has been termed " organic creation by law" or the 

 formation of living beings from inorganic elements. But this theory is 

 not, at present, substantiated, nor even sanctioned, by any unequivocal 

 evidence : and this absence of all proof appears to me the serious and 

 only legitimate objection to the reception of a doctrine which would 

 explain many obscure physiological phenomena, and bring the laws of 

 vitality into harmony with those which preside over the inorganic 

 kingdom of nature. See the Appendix to my " Thoughts on Animal- 

 cules;" and Westminster Review, No. XC, article "Revelations of the 

 Microscope." 



