1882.] Pleading for a Geological Idea. 145 
meteor showers, earthquakes, electric commotions, and 
magnetic constitutions. 
Such joining of a ring must modify the revolution of the 
ring and the rotation of the planet. It must alter the 
eccentricity, and even the mean axis of the common orbit 
round the sun. 
Spreading of Rings. 
Such a descent of mass produces friction and heat. Mo- 
lecular centrifugality is developed, and tends to again lift 
the ring from the planet where centrifugality is greatest. 
The mass of the lifted ring is re-attrac5ted towards those 
parts where centrifugality is least, towards the higher lati- 
tudes and polar extremes, from where it again streams 
and tends towards the equator. Its fluid matter circulates 
round the planet. The ring becomes an envelope, which 
divides and settles according to specific weights and mole- 
cular qualities and affinities, and becomes a new shell, and 
sea, and atmosphere, under the attractive influences of the 
planet and the perturbing sun. 
Tangential Action of Rings. - 
The fall, spreading, and revolution of the ring, growing 
into an envelope, constitute in contact with the planet, under 
the perturbing aCtion of the sun, a combination of tangential 
forces, which, in proportion to the weight and motion of the 
new ring, operates on a corresponding envelope or section of 
the older planet. It develops and maintains friction and 
heat below this section. By the heat they produce these 
tangential forces soften, liquefy, and gasify, expand, lift, 
condense, compress, and metamorphise below the old enve- 
lope, and which they so fold, plicate, push, shove, and par- 
tially lift. The descent of ring after ring is a series of 
catastrophes divided by developing modifying periods. 
The own eccentricity of the planet constitutes the leverage 
by which the descending, slower and slower revolving ring 
aCts on an envelope of a weight proportional to the weight 
and motion of the ring. 
Sliding of Envelope. 
Most geologists consider it absurd that a solid envelope, 
or series of shells, of which the lower have partly pene- 
trated the upper ones, resting on an elastic, locally yielding, 
