490 Rough Notes on the controversy against Geologists. 



all bodies cooling down upon the earth, reach such a degree 

 of tension, and in consequence so confine and press upon 

 the melted matter below, as to cause that to break through 

 it in numerous fissures, and to rise to the surface by that 

 pressure, forming the greater part of the igneous primitive 

 rocks ; the strata, by its passage would be disrupted, torn 

 up, and thrown into different angles of inclination, especially 

 as the commotion would be increased by water penetrat- 

 ing to the fused mass, and the evolution of vapours and 

 gases to which this would give rise ; a phenomenon which 

 would be repeated also at intervals, as the effects shew, 

 in all the other periods of the earth's history. By this the 

 earth was heaved up above the level of the waters, a bed 

 depressed for the reception of the ocean, and the moun- 

 tains were upreared. This was the third period of creation, 

 during the first part of which the deposition of the strata, 

 down to the mountain limestone inclusive, was completed ; 

 during which there was in the ocean numerous corals, shell 

 fish, and some fishes and sea weeds ; and; during the latter 

 part of it, a most abundant vegetation on the dry ground, 

 owing apparently to a high tropical temperature over the 

 whole earth, and an atmosphere too much loaded with 

 carbonic acid (the principal food of plants) for land animals to 

 exist in it. Hence originated, towards the end of this pe- 

 riod, the coal formation, immense deposits of carbonaceous 

 matter, now proved to be of vegetable origin, and still 

 partially to retain the vegetable texture ; and the coal mea- 

 sures, abounding in vegetable remains. This, then, was 

 the epoch when, as mentioned in the Scripture, the earth 

 brought forth grass, the herb and the tree so abundantly, 

 as to constitute as it were, the peculiar reign of vegetable 

 life in predominance over the rest of animated nature. 

 During the whole of this period and the preceding, the 

 earth may be supposed to have derived light and heat from 

 a superior luminous atmosphere encompassing it, whether 



