For more than a year after the new 
Theory was promulgated throughout Eu- 
! rope, Asia and America,—while it wa 
considered so extravagant and extraor¬ 
dinary as to be ranked as the wild effu¬ 
sion of a madman, it was styled Symmes’s* 
but so soon as Symmes’s arguments 
changed or checked, the current of op¬ 
position,-—behold a doubt arises, whether 
he is entitled to enough merit or 0 ^^- 
ality, to have his name attached to it! 
| D. P. in his first strictures says: the 
theory as stated by Symmes, is the same 
that was published by Ilalley in 1692* 
and now he says, the theory is either 
“Halley’s or Kepler’sso much for his 
investigation of authorities. 
D P. is so inconsistent as to admit, in 
a note to his latter strictures, that a cer¬ 
tificate of Symmes’s sanity, very properly 
accompanied his first circular from St. 
Louis. Now it is asked why a certificate 
of sanity was necessary if the circular was 
not originalj and daringly sop—or, if 
otherwise, why was not Kepler, or Halley, 
or Euler, as much in need of a certificate 
as Symmes ? 
; As to D. P’s. reiterated allusion to “ the 
Captain’s want of time,” it appears both 
waspish and illiberal; for, surely, no wri- 
| f er can properly be blamed for being brief, 
when he comments on an essay already 
in type, and just under the press awaiting 
his remarks. Drowning men, however, 
are apt to catch at straws; and D. P. must 
say something ; altho’, if he had waited a 
day or two for the extended answer, of 
Sept. 15, he might have saved himself the 
trouble of exposing his want of temper in 
a controversy where it is so essentially 
necessary to success. 
It appears by D. P’s. quotation, that 
Doctor Halley, (if not Kepler,) had sug¬ 
gested that “ there may be several inter¬ 
nal spheres,’’ but it does not appear that 
they gave it as their positive belief,or recor. 
ded it as a part of their proper theories, 
j respectively, as they did that of the earth 
containing a “magnetic ball (which two 
I theories, coming from the same person, 
\ 
