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CONSTITUTION O V THE GLOBE. 
Ilie foil owing reflections and experiment on 
central forces, and on the constitution of the 
globe we inhabit, are contained in a letter 
from Thomas Tufts, of Gennessee county, N. i 
Y. to Dr. Mitchill of New York, dated July j 
22, 1819. The opinions of our philsophers, j 
Mitchill, Symmes, and Tufts, are probably 
not more visionary than those of Newton and j 
Copernicus were once supposed to be. 
Galaxy. 
Sir —Although a stranger I shall make no a- 
pology for addressing you, on so interesting a 
subject to all scientific men. Accident brought 
me to reflect upon the formation of the earth. 
Taking it for granted, that this earth has been 
of a consistence that would take shape by mo¬ 
tion, and from what has been discovered, there 
are strong arguments in its favor,what would be 
its internal structure ?. I have observed in a 
common barrel churn, that a quick regular mo- 
I tion, would throw the cream upon the sides of 
the churn, without any agitation, leaving none 
at the ends, and I had observed, that a regular 
motion given to a grindstone, that was hung 
perfectly true, would retain water upon the top 
of the stone without throwing it off'; I consider¬ 
ed that the laws of nature and of motion mdst be 
uniform. It occurred to me that motion must 
produce the same effects on this earth that we 
see it have on smaller bodies. These considera¬ 
tions induced me to make a machine to demon¬ 
strate this as far as I possibly could. I accor¬ 
dingly prepared an artificial globe, from a pine 
log, about nine feet in circumference, as near 
the known shape of this earth as possible: open 
at the poles, the concavity of the inside, answer- 
able to the convexity of the outside, the aper¬ 
ture at the poles answerable to about 36 de¬ 
grees of the earth. I then fixed it on pivols, 
with machinery to give it. a very quick motion- 
1 then turned water in the inside of the ball, 
and put it in motion, and the event was as 1 
had anticipated; the water spread itself smooth 
upon it, in a smooth even surface, without any 
attempts to fly «ff. I then perforated the ball in 
a number of places; it created as many most 
beautiful springs of water upon the outside of 
the ball, which satisfactorily accounts to me for 
| the origin ofspvngs and of course of rivers, and 
it will press the water through the pores of the 
wood sufficiently to moisten the whole outside I 
surface. . 
I contemplate fasmoning the outside of the 
little Globe like unto dns earth, cut out the 
oceans, continents, vers, valleys, &c. and if i 
1 can contrive any n.et . 0 . to counteract the ef- j 
