26$ EXPLANATIONS. 



is exactly what a fluid mass rotating at such a rate of 

 speed would assume any day we might try the experiment 

 The relative distances of the planets have been dieter- 

 mined by the relation of two laws of matter, so thoroughly 

 patent in their working to modern observation, that a 

 mathematician could ascertain this their result and an* 

 nounce it from his closet, although he never had heard ot 

 a planetary system in which it was exemplified. There 

 is surely here anything but a likelihood that different 

 causes from those now existing and acting were the im- 

 mediate means of producing the cosmical arrangements. 

 May we not rather say that, whatever may have been the 

 details of the formation of globes, we possess ample proof 

 that it was a phenomenon evolved by virtue of exactly 

 the same system of order which we see still operating 

 upon earth ? As to the origin of organic beings, our 

 knowledge of geology comes to precisely a similar effect. 

 Admitting that we see not now any such fact as the pro- ' 

 duction of new species, we at least know that, while such 

 facts were occurring upon earth, there were associated 

 phenomena in progress of a character perfectly ordinary. 

 For example, when the earth received its first fishes, 

 sandstone and limestone were forming in the manner ex- 

 emplified a few years ago in the ingenious experiments of 

 Sir James Hall : basaltic columns rose for the future won- 

 aer of man, according to the principle which Dr. Gregory 

 Watt showed in operation before the eyes of our fathers; 

 and hollows in the igneous rocks were rilled with crystals, 

 precisely as they could now be by virtue of electric ac- 

 tion, as shown within the last few years by Crosse and 

 Becquerel. The seas obeyed the impulse of gentle 

 breezes, and rippled their sandy bottoms as seas of the 

 present day are doing ; the trees grew as now by favor 

 of sun and wind, thriving in good seasons and pining in 

 oad ; this, while the animals above fishes were yet to be 

 created. The movements of the sea, the meteorological 

 agencies, the disposition which we see in the generality 

 of plants to thrive when heat and moisture were most 

 abundant, were kept up in silent serenity, as matters ol 

 simply natural order, throughout the whole of the ages 

 which saw reptiles enter in their various forms upon the 

 sea and land. It was aboat the time of the first mammals 

 that the forest of the Dirt Bed was sinking in natural ruin 

 am ids 4 the sea sludge, as forests of the P'antagenets hava 



