Rough JStotes on the controversy against Geologists. 491 



attached to itself, or a part of the condensing vaporous ne- 

 bula; just as at present a luminous calorific atmosphere 

 surrounds the dark body of the sun, and, through occa- 

 sional partings in it, discloses that dark body within in 

 the shape of opaque spots on his disk. 



As the successive cooling down of the nebulous mass pro- 

 ceeded, a different order of things commenced, constituting 

 the fourth period or epoch of the creation. Before this the 

 temperature of the nebula has been supposed to fall at one 

 point chiefly, around the centre of which was deposited the 

 condensed matter forming the globe of this our earth ; but 

 then, as the caloric of the vaporous fluid became still farther 

 dissipated into space, several other centres of refrigeration 

 and deposit took place in it. The largest of these, nearly in 

 the middle of the nebula, attracted to itself by far the larger 

 portion of matter and became the sun ; which thus, owing 

 to the immensely larger quantity of the vapour which was 

 condensed to form it, and the consequently much longer 

 interval of time necessary to cool it, was of much more 

 recent origin than the earth. Around other centres, to- 

 wards the outer verge of the nebula, there were other 

 condensations into the planetary bodies of the solar system 

 and the moon, which last, coming within the range of the 

 attractive influence of the earth in preference to that of any 

 other of these bodies, became to it a secondary or satellite. 

 This the Scripture speaks of as the work of the fourth day. 



In giving an account of this hypothesis, the vaporous mat- 

 ter of the nebula has been supposed to have been condens- 

 ed to its several centres of deposit, within the nebula, and 

 in the globular form ; and this view has been taken on ac- 

 count of its greater simplicity and seeming probability, and 

 because several such different centres of deposit have been 

 actually observed in nebulae. Some have, however, prefer- 

 red a different one. According to this, it has been thought 

 more likely that the vortiginous nebula cooled and condens- 



