220 
r*' ' P“> s<,ph y..« , e gaseous, liquid, and solid 
f. arth s tripartite materials ore maintained. It will be 
seen that in these views no account is taken of Laplace's Nebular 
Hypothesis. I confess that I have never been able to accent that 
lypothesis, on account of the hopelessness of the possibility P of our 
ever comprehending in what way masses of porphyry and Granite 
substances, could have been produced^ from cosmical nebular 
St to thS’ f S 1 t i r k • 1 kav ® shown > the words of Scripture 
K ! ’f e . existe ? ce of Pnmordial conditions of quite a different 
d, and since also, according to our principles, we can look for 
n*“ a T 0n respecting such conditions only from the Word of the 
Hypotheses 00110 Ude ^ t l6re 1S no foundation for the Nebular 
41. In Eastern nations it seems that a traditional cosmogony 
was extensively prevalent, according to which the original state of 
orio-in S , Whether or nofc this idea had its 
in m Scripture, it certainly approximates closely to the view 
taken above of the description in Genesis i. of the earth’s pri- 
mordial condition Now, as by mere application of heat the chick 
is generated out of the albumen and yolk of the egg, analogous 
effects might result from the action of heat on the comment p°arts 
of the earth disposed as above stated. The first effect of such 
‘ *? produce the firmament spoken of as made on the 
siXX’l h f 1C f generatin - h y evaporation from the ocean- 
earSl%nrf fl Pp d ' J “i se P ar ^ ted ^ a eertain interval from the 
nnd ,1 Tr£ ’ f d anal °»°f in that aspect to the ever-varyino- 
mssin° tt 1 f T Whlch the telesc °P e g hows to us as encom- 
passing the body of the sun. 
x t 2 :- Bef f re P roceedin S t0 th e next step, I beg to call attention 
to a singular circumstance relating to the distances of the planets 
rom the sun The intervals between successive orbits increase it 
seems, with distance from the sun according to an empirical law 
called Bode slaw, which, however, has no pretension to ? exactness’ 
and was found, in fact, not to be satisfied in the case of the distant 
planet INeptune. As the theory of gravity will not account for 
such a law, possibly it maybe ascribed to a repulsive action between 
the planetary masses at very remote geological epochs, when their 
internal and radiated heat might far exceed the amount of any 
[X at t! ‘ c P resent tin, e- Supposing a change of distances 
X 5 h ? sun to have resulted from this operation, till the planets 
settled down into their present mean distances, and supposing their 
masses at the same time to have undergone a process of cooling 
we have m the consequent variation of the earth’s internal heat’ 
and in the before-mentioned cloud-stratum, just the conditions 
which, according to the arguments in my paper' « On the Relation 
