82 
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 autliors as a suggestion, but every tittle of evidence to support 
it has vanished, and left not a wreck behind. AYe 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. AVas 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 geue» 
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. 
