422 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
whose wear upon land the waste has been derived. So much we 
may discover from what is now going on before our eyes. 
If we next assume that at some former epoch a similar waste 
bad been carried on, so long and so far that the earth became less 
and less suitable for the maintenance of vegetable and animal life 
on its surface, we then find that a provision exists for renovation 
of that surface to its pristine condition through the agency of sub- 
terranean fire. This power, of whose existence in tremendous 
energy we have sensible proof in many regions of the globe, had 
only to approach the subaqueous beds of waste matter in order to 
fuse them ; and then, with a little accumulation of force, to raise 
them high out of the ocean from its bosom, and even to burst 
through them, driving far upwards into light and air immense 
masses of fused materials, long pent up in that state deep in the 
interior of the earth. 
In conformity with this theory, we should find in the present 
dry land the stratiform portion of the earth’s crust presenting in 
its deepest beds a crystalliform structure corresponding with the 
laws which govern concretion from a state of perfect fluidity under 
very slow cooling. On approaching the present actual surface 
from these deep beds, we ought to find in the superimposed beds 
rocks presenting signs of agglutination merely, from softening 
rather than downright fusion. Close to the present surface we 
should remark perhaps little more than that amount of loose 
cohesion among the particles composing the rocky beds, which may 
be fairly ascribed to mere compression sustained while the beds lay 
under an enormous mass of superincumbent sea. We ought also 
to remark, that the remains of animals and vegetables are most dis- 
tinct and least altered by heat from below in the uppermost layers 
of the stratiform rocks, less and less so as we descend, and at length 
unrecognisable in the deepest, most perfectly fused beds, — not be- 
ciuse vegetable and animal remains were not there deposited along 
with the earth’s waste, but simply because their form was entirely 
destroyed, and their substance completely incorporated through 
perfect fusion with the matter in which they lay. If cavities be 
formed from any cause in the beds of consolidated rocks, we should 
expect to find in the deep, highly fused beds, but not in those of 
stony matter agglutinated by mere softening, that these cavities 
