S2 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



its sister-planets round our sun ? As baseless then as the fabric of 

 a vision is the nebulous theory, ingenious undoubtedly and creditable 

 to its authors as a suggestion, but every tittle of evidence to support 

 it has vanished, and left not a wreck behind. We ask the supporters 

 of this doctrine — for many still there are — to point out an instance 

 of the evolution of light and heat by slow condensation of gaseous 

 matter? If we fire hydrogen and oxygen, the condensation assumes 

 the form of an explosion, light and heat are generated in a sudden 

 flash, and the resulting drop of water is formed. If then the mate- 

 rials of the earth were derived from the condensation of gaseous mat- 

 ters in space, that condensation would be of the briefest period of 

 time, not enduring for unaccountable ages, — the formation of our 

 globe rapid and suddenly consummated. "Was it so ? If by loss of 

 heat in condensation the solid and fluid materials of our earth were 

 thus resolved into a globe, heat must have been the cause of the pre- 

 vious expansion of those materials into a gaseous state. Whence, 

 then, was that heat derived ? In the interior of our earth, where 

 every atom of matter is subjected to pressure and chemical action, it 

 is easy to see that in the natural order of the correlation of physical 

 forces, motion and heat must be produced. And so far it is certain 

 that in the natural and unavoidable changes which are there going 

 on, heat equal to any degree of temperature yet observed in the deep- 

 est mines, or the waters of the deepest wells, may be constantly gene- 

 rated and maintained. If we take the meteorites which have fallen 

 upon our earth and examine them, even the smallest are composed 

 of solid earthy or metallic substances. May not these meteorites be 

 the nuclei of worlds ? If iron, potassium, sodium be in vaporous 

 incandescence round the sun, why may not metallic particles exist in 

 space ? If solid materials, whether in almost infinitesimally mecha- 

 nically-divided, or in vaporous or gaseous states, exist in space, segre- 

 gation by such atoms is inevitable. Two or three united together by 

 mutual affinity and attraction, would gather in time two or three 

 more, and so on rushing through space they would ever gather like the 

 snowball in weight and volume as they rolled. May we not ask, is 

 not orbital and celestial motion ordained for the very purpose of 

 world-increase — the gathering and segregating of more materials ? 

 Take this view, and you have the greatest and grandest of worlds 

 formed as placidly as a rain-drop, and the mind is relieved of the 

 puzzling incongruities of luminous condensation without explosion, 

 and of internal cores of molten rock in every planet, without any 

 source of fire to keep the melting up from age to age. 



