THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 41 



Demaillet covered the whole globe with water for thousands of 

 years ; he caused those waters gradually to retire ; all terrestrial ani - 

 mals had at first been marine ; man himself was at first a fish ; and the 

 author assures his readers that it is not uncommon to find in the ocean 

 fishes which have not only become half men, but which will some day 

 become entire human beings *. 



The system of Buffon is only a development of that of Leibnitz, 

 with the sole addition of a comet, which produced from the sun, by a 

 violent shock, the liquefied mass of the earth, together with all the 

 planets : whence result his positive data, for by the actual temperature 

 of the earth we can calculate how long a time has elapsed since it 

 grew cool ; and, since the other planets came from the sun at the same 

 time as the earth, we may reckon how many ages must elapse before 

 the larger ones cool, and to what extent the smaller ones have become 

 refrigeratedf. 



The Latest Systems. 



In our times imagination has exercised itself with more freedom 

 than before on this important subject. Some writers have re-produced 

 and greatly extended the ideas of Demaillet ; they say that, at first 

 first everything was in a state of liquefaction ; that the liquid at first 

 engendered animals of the simplest kind, such as monads and others of 

 the infusory and microscopic species ; that, in progress of time, and in 

 assuming different habits, the animalia complicated and diversified 

 their species to the extent which we now have in existence. It is 

 these animals who have converted the waters of the ocean gradually 

 into calcareous earth ; vegetables, on the origin and changes of which 

 they tell us nothing, have changed the water into clay ; but these two 

 earths, by dint of being deprived of the characteristics which life had 

 impressed on them, were resolved, by the last analysis, into flint ; and 

 that is the reason why the oldest mountains are the most flinty. All 

 the solid portions of the earth owe their birth, then, to life, and with- 

 out life the whole globe would be still wholly liquid J. 



Other writers have given the preference to the theory of Kepler. 

 Like this great astronomer, they assign vital powers to the globe ; 

 they say that a fluid circulates around it ; an assimilation is made as 

 in animate bodies ; each of its component parts has life : not only the 

 very elementary atoms have instinct and will, which attract and repel 



* Telliamed. Amster. 1748. 



t Throne de la terre, 1749 ; et Epoques de la Nature, 1775. 



X See La Physique de Rodig. p. 106. Leips. 1801 ; and p. 169, vol. ii. of Tellia- 

 med, as well as a great number of German works. M. de Lamarck has, with much 

 research and talent, developed this system in his " Hydrogeology and Zoological Phi- 

 losophy." ^**^- r ~ r ~ , " B -' s *^ 



VOL. I. >^Tt . J ' *V^ 6 



