12 
condition. It is requisite, therefore, to represent; our planet m its primitive 
condition as an aggregate of aeriform fluids as a substance entirely gaseous. 
Raised to a temperature of white-heat ( rouge-blanc ), by the excessive 
heat which affected it, the gaseous mass, which constituted then the earth, 
shone in space as shines the sun at the present time, as shine to our eyes in 
the serenity of the night the fixed stars and the planets. < . 
Revolving round the sun, according to the law of universal gravitation, this 
burning gaseous mass was neoessarily subject to the laws which affect other 
material substances. It became cooler, it gradually ceded a portion of its 
heat to the icy regions of the interplanetary spaces, m the midst of which it 
traced the thread of its blazing orbit. But in the course of this continual 
cooling down, and at the end of a period, of which it would be impossible 
to fix, even approximately, the duration, the primitively gaseoiis star 
arrived at a liquid condition Mechanics teach us that a liquid body 
kept in a state of rotation takes necessarily the spherical form ; it is thus 
that the earth took the globular or spheroidal form which is proper to it, as to 
the majority of the heavenly bodies.’ * 
Here it will be observed that the basis of this cosmological 
speculation is the supposed geological “ fact/’ that it had been 
ascertained that the centre of our earth is elevated even yet to 
the inconceivably enormous temperature of lJo,0U0 . in s 
notion or quasi “ fact” was again based upon an assumption 
that the increase of the earth's temperature, as we descend, 
proceeds at a certain ratio, more and more, till we reach the 
centre : and, further, that the granite rocks were formed by 
means of dry heat of this great intensity and a subsequent 
crystallization by cooling down.' 
But let us see how now stand these foundation tacts ot 
this astronomo-geological science, which was put forward so 
confidently only a few years ago against the Mosaic Cosmogony. 
In Sir Charles Lyell’s Bath address, he says The study, of 
late years, of the constituent parts of granite has led to the 
conclusion that their consolidation has taken place at tempera- 
tures far below those formerly supposed to be mdispensable. 
“Various experiments have led to the conclusion that -the 
minerals which enter most largely into the composition ot the 
metamorphic rocks have not been formed by crystallizing from a 
state of fusion, or in the dry way, but that they have been derived 
* Figuier, La Terre avant le Deluge, Paris, 1863 (p. 27). Since this 
was written, I have observed that the publication of an English translation 
from the fourth French edition of this interesting work has been announced 
by Messrs. Chapman & Hall. In this work, geology is described as pie- 
eminently a French science l* which may account, perhaps, f OT no modifi- 
cation of the nebular theory being made in this last edition, notwithstanding 
Sir Charles Lyell’s Bath address. 
