Remarks on the Planets Jupiter and Saturn. 343 



whose peculiar dissolving and disintegrating action on the 

 igneous formations which at that early period of the earth's 

 history must have formed the only material of its crust, and 

 may in that respect obtain some insight into the source 

 whence the material which formed the first sedimentary strata 

 was derived. If we only carry our minds back to that early 

 period of the earth's geological history, where the tempera- 

 ture of its surface was so high as that no water in its fluid 

 form could rest upon it, and follow its condition from such 

 non-oceanic state to that period at which, by reason of the 

 comparatively cooled-down condition of its surface, it began 

 to be visited by partial and transient descents of the ocean, 

 which had till then existed only in the form of a vast vapour 

 envelope to the earth, we shall find in such considerations, 

 not only the most sublime subject of reflection, in reference 

 to the primitive condition of our globe, but also, as it ap- 

 pears to me, a very legitimate basis on which to rest our 

 speculations in regard to the probable present condition of 

 Jupiter and Saturn, — both of which great planets, I strongly 

 incline to consider for the reasons before stated, are yet in 



over-loaded ill-supported floor, and so permit the ocean to rush in with fearful 

 violence, and occupy the place of the so submerged continent. 



Judging from the facts which geological phenomena yield us in abundance, 

 these incursions of the ocean must have been sudden, violent, and of frequent 

 occurrence. 



The sudden sinking down of a continent to the extent of 1000 feet in depth, 

 would be but an insignificant adjustment of the crust of the earth, to the re- 

 treating or contracting interior, as compared to the actual diameter of the 

 earth (being only about one four-thousandth part of its diameter), but yet such 

 a subsidence occurring to any portion of a continent near the sea, would occa- 

 sion a rush of waters over its surface, amply sufficient to perform all the feats 

 of violence and denudation (of the occurrence and action of which we have 

 most palpable evidence), which have taken place during many successive pe- 

 riods of the earth's geological history, not only in the vast accumulations of 

 debris, caused by these violent incursions of the ocean, but also in the prodi- 

 gious dislocations of strata, which have resulted from the crushing down of the 

 crust of the earth, in its attempts to follow down and fill up the void or hollow 

 spaces caused by the contracting and retreating nucleus, which as before said, 

 I consider to be the true cause of this class of deluges, the tremendous violence 

 of which has yielded the old red sandstone, and all other sandstones, conglo- 

 merates, boulders, gravel, sand, and clay. 



