G 
same amount has the interior pressure and density been 
relieved and lessened. Suppose, for instance, that one- 
fourth part of the surface of the globe is land which has 
been raised from the bosom of the deep, say to the amount 
of 1,000 feet from a depth of 160 miles, leaving the 
emptied space hollow, or filled with expanded gases ; to 
the same amount would the density or ms inertice of the 
earth be decreased. And, therefore, if the origin of the 
third law of Kepler be true, then must the earth's orbit 
have been nearer the sun, and to have reached its present 
position, been secularly increasing. The density has been 
decreasing also by irruptions of melted matter out of its 
interior from volcanos and eruptions of gases, &c, and the 
consumption annually of 62,000,000 tons of coals in Great 
Britain alone. 
Let us, however, examine what geological evidence there 
is of the diminished density of the earth. Professor 
Phillips (Lardner's Cyclop., vol. I, p. 120) speaking of 
the primary strata and on the gneiss and mica schist 
series, says, " To describe the extent of country covered by 
" gneiss and mica schist on the continent of Europe would 
" perhaps be impracticable. The Pyrenees, the Alps, and 
" the great chains of Bohemia and Scandinavia are full of 
" these rocks, which have much the same characters as the 
" Grampians and Connemara, rest in the same way on 
" granite and are equally deficient of organic remains. 
" Most of the great mountain chains of the world contain 
" these rocks, and they may be considered as the most 
" nearly universal strata we are acquainted with." Speaking 
of the origin and formation of the gneiss and mica schist beds, 
he says, " There is no proof, nor any high degree of pro- 
bability, that organic beings had been created — no proof of 
" the emergence of land (implying that the expansion of the 
" crust had not then commenced) but evidence of watery 
