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tinuous progression of change of the earth's centre of gravity 
in one general direction, augmenting, by impulse to transfer 
of oceanic volume, the condition involving such change. 
But if the oceanic envelop must inevitably, in obedience to 
the natural law of gravitation, transfer portions of its volume 
from the coasts of the Southern hemisphere, and the eastern 
half of the Northern hemisphere, to accumulate in the 
Northern Pacific, as scientific observation proves to be the 
actual fact, we have a priori testimony to actual sequences 
of the force thus evoked. And when we find in nature 
existence of a semi-diurnal wave of transmission of successive 
films of water in course of such transfer, and the flex and 
reflex of said waves, from impingement on opposing coasts, 
affords a marked general coincidence of action with what, on 
scientific principles, we must deem necessary action under 
influence of exciting force, and in effect restraining subverting 
tendencies of the loss of equilibrium evoked, we perceive evi- 
dence of an All-wise design, and conceive that the exciting cause 
of the oceanic tides is, in this way, more rationally accounted 
for than by the popular theory, (regarded by the Astronomer- 
Royal of England as "contemptible") of referring the 
cause to planetary, or solar attraction, upon an wholly 
imaginary (coined for the purpose) belt of accumulated 
waters within the tropics. Change in the 'centre of gravity, 
is- by mechanical law, change of line of axis, and perpen- 
diculars thereto, with all their parallels, termed, as regards 
our earth, degrees of longitude and latitude. It is currently 
asserted by astronomers that such changes are physically 
impossible ; that the rotatory motion of the earth accu- 
mulates, or has accumulated, a tropical enlargement, or 
band of the originally molten matter, and that this regulates 
her equilibrium as to her position in space while performing 
her mighty revolutions, daily upon her axis, and yearly 
around the sun, and by now amassing waters equatorially, pre- 
vents their gravitation elsewhere. But, as yet, science only 
adduces these as plausible hypotheses, for there is no one 
absolute proof of either the axial or orbital revolutions, and 
many facts in nature cast doubt as to the fact. The moot 
points as to the sun's distance, and the actual time, if any, 
required for transmission of light, and as to what stellar 
bodies are dependent on our, or other suns, for light, render- 
ing them luminous to us, if ever satisfactorily resolved by 
science, may be revolutionary in effect upon the hypotheses 
of to-day. Our little globe — the initial stand-point, perhaps, 
of a new creation of intelligent beings, and of preparation 
of stellar worlds for their future homes, and progressive 
