CHAPTER I.

Three Theories Reviewed in the Light Of Scientific Facts.

In the study of Nature, aided only by natural phenomena, effect, suggesting cause, is everywhere apparent. These effects variously compounded point with accuracy only to secondary causes. First causes are hidden far behind all existing appearances.

Unaided nature leaves man to seek first causes only by hypotheses. As might be expected, on the same subject scientists widely differ in theory. Such reasoning must ever leave a large margin for opinion.

Notwithstanding the uncertainty of all such modes of reasoning, still that hypothesis must ever possess the greatest weight, that best accords with the largest number of existing facts. Reasoning _a priori_, from the providing care of nature’s God, as seen in stores of coal, oil, iron, copper, and various kinds of precious metals, we might reasonably conclude that he who created the intellectual as well as the religious nature in man would carefully provide for the full gratification of both. Knowing God’s nature, reason would suggest that what is wanting in nature must somewhere be supplied by special revelation of God.

The book of nature coupled with the Bible would be a necessity; not only for a complete worship, but for a full cosmology. We should expect the two volumes, when rightly rendered, to correspond. A noted atheistical lecturer upon cosmical changes stated in a series of lectures in Chico, Cal., that the “Bible theory of creation is decidedly watery. By the statements of this book, we should conclude that the center itself is one vast body of water, holding upon its bosom a crust of earth.” As a believer in the Plutonic theory, and having no reverence for the Bible, he added, “What fool does not know better?” What he gave as a “Bible Theory,” we will assume as a scientific hypothesis; and rest the proof of the same upon the facts in nature which scientists, in advocating the Plutonic theory, have given us.

It will be the object of this chapter to show that the more recently developed facts in geology point unmistakably to the Neptunian theory of Creation. This will be done by comparing the three theories, and each with lines of facts which have been well established. It will be necessary

Section 1 To State the Plutonic Theory of the Schools.

1. That all matter existed, or was created in a primeval state of heat. One hypothesis is, that all matter of our system was concentrated in one heated ball as a central sun.

2. That planets are portions of this matter, thrown off by a rapid rotary motion of the sun. Properly named, this theory was the centro-centrifugal theory, now quite out of date. That this theory might be true, the sun must have turned upon its axis with a velocity sufficient not only to destroy gravitation at its surface, now twenty-seven times that of the Earth, but with a force capable of throwing Jupiter, fourteen hundred times the size of the Earth, out into space four hundred and seventy-five million of miles, and Neptune over two billion of miles. When we consider that our sun now turns on its axis only once in twenty-seven days, we conclude that a vivid imagination must have supplied the machinery necessary for such astounding results in the very face of forbidding facts. This theory made no provision for the encircling waters, sufficient to wrap the entire surface of the globe three miles deep, nor for the enveloping atmosphere. Gradually this ancient theory has been modulated into the Nebulous Theory.

3. The more popular teaching of today is, that matter existed in a highly heated state in the form of a diffused cloud. Steel, in his “Fourteen Weeks in Geology,” suggests that “From unknown causes, this cloud-matter began to revolve about a center or sun. This nucleus drew matter direct to itself from all parts of our system. Other portions revolving were thrown off, and formed new centers for planetary gathering, as they respectively took up their orbicular march about the sun. This fiery mist is supposed to have come together in a heated state. The planets, at least, have since been cooling, though as yet having but a thin crust.” To this theory of primeval heat, in some form, all our text books conform. A theory so long and so universally accepted might be supposed to have some solid facts upon which to rest. But really it has less to sustain it than had the Ptolemaic theory of Astronomy: that, at least, had observation in its favor, but this fails even here. It is a curious circumstance in this guess work of results, that whether heat is made to increase on an average one degree in fifty feet, as given by many geologists, or one degree in one hundred feet, as given by others, precisely the same results are reached, viz., fifty miles crust, and intensely heated matter beyond. This assumption is based upon the supposed fact that the internal heat traverses the rock by conduction. If this were true, then the degree of heat gained in any one hundred feet of rock, as you descend into the Earth’s crust, would be the approximate measurement of any other hundred feet in the same shaft; but the reverse of this is true. No two measurements seem to be alike. The miner, as a practical geologist, in this regard knows that this heat is generally caused by chemical action of the rock upon which you have let in air or water, or both. This heat is found to vary according to nature of the rock which you expose. If the rock is rich in pyrites of iron or lime, in any of its numerous forms, then disintegration is abundant and much heat is generated; but, on the other hand, where all disintegrating elements are wanting, there is no perceptible increase of heat.

4. The theory of the continued increase of heat, according to the ratio noticed as you sink a shaft a few hundred feet into the Earth’s crust, if it proves anything proves too much, and is therefore false. Experiments extensively made in the Virginia mines of Nevada, and particularly in the Foreman Shaft, show the increase to be very uneven; differing from one degree in twelve feet to one in two hundred feet. It even grows colder as you descend some kind of rock, a degree in one hundred feet. The degree of heat is always regulated and gauged by the rock you pass. If the rock will disintegrate readily, it gives out more heat; but if the rock may lie exposed in the sun and rain without disintegration, it throws out no heat in the shaft. Yet from experiments made in the Foreman Shaft, notwithstanding these varieties of rock, yet at the 2,100 foot level it is found that the average increase is one degree in twelve feet. At this rate, at twenty-five miles towards the center you would encounter heat above 4,300 deg. Fahr. Chemists will admit that, after due allowance for pressure at such a depth, yet the granite with all known substances would fuse at this heat. The Plutonic hypothesis makes the crust in Nevada less than twenty-five miles, perhaps the weakest on the continent.

Experiments in Mexico, upon this line of reasoning, would make the crust twice as thick. Now from a well established law in philosophy, a pressure upon liquid on the inside of a cylinder imparts its pressure to every part of the cylinder at the same time. A pressure capable of breaking the crust in any place should, at least, cause all the openings to emit lava at the same time. But this is not the historic action of volcanoes; one emits while another sleeps.

It is a historic fact observed within the present century, that a volcanic mountain rose up from a comparatively level plane in Mexico, in one night, to the height of 1,695 feet. On the assumption that lava comes from the center of the earth, why should not the above pressure have found the weaker crust, and Nevada have been the place of eruption instead of Mexico? and why should not the three hundred open vents of Earth have emitted lava at the same time? The theory will not bear philosophic tests.

The Russian report of the increase of heat is only one-fourth that given in Nevada. Who believes, therefore, that the crust there is four times as thick as in Nevada? The whole subject shows that the increase of heat in the shaft proves nothing as to the interior of Earth, and nothing as to the thickness of its crust.

5. To establish the Plutonic theory, it is at least necessary to demonstrate that the granite, which all hold to be the under rock, is the unstratified Plutonic foundation of all stratified rock. Recent facts have demonstrated that the granite is a sedimentary rock, or rock deposited in water. This being admitted, although contradicting the teachings of all the older text books, some writers, among them is Steel, in order to harmonize the Plutonic theory with these stubborn facts, have assumed that the primitive granite, which by the theory must have been trap or lava, has all been worn away by disintegration of water and ice, or both; and again, by water deposited as we now find it. But what was a white-hot globe of lava doing, while water and ice were tearing and grinding its lower crust to powdered sand? We have secondary granite, but its structure is very different from primitive granite. Besides containing hard pebbles and boulders of other stone, it is friable, and easily disintegrated under exposure. It is a bad theory that is driven to such unheard-of suppositions for its support. Nothing is more evident, if the granite is the under rock, and sedimentary, as represented and known to be, than that the Plutonic theory is completely without foundation.

6. The modern theory of metamorphic rock, occasioned by internal heat, is also false. This theory maintains that the granite, slates, and marble existed so near to the great body of internal heat that they must have been metamorphosed. Facts demonstrate that these rocks, as a rule, were never in heat equal to 700 deg. Fahr. Such a heat will readily disintegrate any of these formations. Any one can demonstrate this by melting a little lead upon a piece of slate, marble, or granite. The furnace is found to be the best general test of the origin of rock. Lava, having been in a melted state, will not disintegrate up to the melting point, but, as a rule, will readily melt at the white heat. Granite, the slates, marble, and rock in general, of a sedimentary formation, will disintegrate at a comparatively low heat, but they will not melt, except with alkaloids, or flux, and then only at a very high degree of heat. This test shows all the primitive rock, including injected seams, to have been formed in the sea, with no heat to change their structure since. There are a few exceptions to the rule of disintegration, as clay rock.

7. If the granite were not sedimentary, we could not account for the great quantity of sedimentary rock this side. Among the authors of our text books there seems to be a general vagueness concerning the origin of stratified rock, except in regard to coal, which all admit came out of the air. If we should assume that the granite was lava, but all the stratified rock since, until you reach the region of conglomerate, came from the air, how shall we account for the close similarity in appearance and structure of the gneiss and granite? Theory has piled thirty or forty miles of this sedimentary, stratified rock above the granite; whence did it come? Any openings in the granite would let up only lava. Whence the material for sediment? We shall, farther on, show that all primitive rock, like the coal, came from the gases of the atmosphere once enveloping this globe.

8. Our best scientists now readily unite with the keen sighted miner in accounting for this increase of heat as you pass down the shaft, on entirely different principles from those stated in the text books. Prof. Joseph Le Conte says that “Chemical action of air and water upon the rock, as you descend into the Earth’s crust, is undoubtedly the cause of the increase of heat.” Again he says, “This heat is regulated and gauged by the constituents of the rock that you pass.” Now admitting that the rock, as a rule, would show an average increase of heat down to the Carboniferous system, or even to the Devonian, yet there is rock enough beyond that contains so much less carbon, as to show such a decrease of heat that must more than counteract all the increase above. Whether we follow up the old hypothesis, with the laws regulating heat by conduction or chemical action, the theory is utterly without foundation. The late Prof. Norton, of the California State Normal, said in a lecture at Pacific Grove, in 1883, “Every living geologist that I know of in the world will admit, for he _knows_, that the granite was a sedimentary rock.” This sentiment of his speech being reported to Le Conte, he replied, “In this position Prof. Norton is undoubtedly right.” It is thus seen that the Plutonic theory in our text books is at variance with modern experiments, and is proved to be utterly false.

9. Volcanoes and geysers were formerly supposed to settle the question in favor of the old theory. The phenomena of both are such as to strongly argue against it. Most geysers are known to be caused by chemical action of rock. We instance those in Hot Spring Valley, Cal., near Lassen Buttes. No one, having noticed the various colored mud-pots and mounds of pulpy rock thrown up by these boiling cauldrons, can come to any other conclusion. A few geysers may be exceptions, having been caused by water trickling over heated rock in proximity to volcanoes. These prove nothing as to the center of the earth, until it can be established that this body of lava is in the center of the earth. A multitude of facts in connection with volcanic action demonstrate that lava does not proceed from a common center.

A few we will here give. (1.) Lava varies in color according to the color of the stratified rock found in the vicinity. Thus, between Reno and Wadsworth, Nevada, may be seen a red ledge of sedimentary rock. Close by are found quantities of red lava, being the same shade of red found in the sedimentary. Pieces of rock may be seen, one side showing the sedimentary strata, and the other partially melted. Lava everywhere, probably, is only sedimentary rock melted. (2.) Volcanic disturbances are local, which they could not be if they proceeded from a common center. (3.) The existence of great quantities of ashes, so light as to float on the surface of water, argues the consumption of some burning material, as of coal. Nothing of this would exist in matter that had primarily been collected in liquid, and had ever been in a fused state. Something must have been burning to produce the ashes. (4.) The fact of all the great upheavals of plateaus and mountains having been this side the Carboniferous system of deposit, where the burning material, sufficient to produce volcanic effect, was extracted from the air and laid down as rock, argues in favor of a power much nearer than force, generated from a primeval sea of lava. Burning coal as a source of heat, and steam as a power, are ample to account for every volcanic disturbance, however it may have been modified by electric forces.

10. Most geologists are dissatisfied with the fire theory, and are looking about for a revolution in the teaching of the science. Professor Norton said, “We are upon the eve of a perfect revolution in the science of geology.” Agassiz said, “The Plutonic theory loses ground as soon as brought to scientific tests.” Again he uttered with decided emphasis, “If the center of our earth were molten lava, as hot as represented, a crust of rock fifty miles thick would melt, and, in the space of a few hours, fall into the great sea.”

A teacher of geology in one of our large colleges, who had just finished a lecture upon the Plutonic theory, said, “I have given that theory because it is the teaching of all our text-books; but I do not believe it. Many facts now coming to light show that the Water theory is destined to come to the front.”

11. The fact that submarine volcanoes happen, without letting the ocean into the great sea of lava, shows that no such sea is there. But for the money and reputation invested in school books upon this defunct theory, it would have been, before this, consigned to the Plutonic hell of the Greeks, from whence, it is more than probable, it originated.

12. Many admitted facts are utterly inconsistent with this theory. We will stop to notice but two.

(1.) It is a generally admitted fact, that the entire land portions of the explored earth, including Greenland to the 80th parallel, were either in a tropical or semi-tropical climate, from the beginning of sedimentary rock, up to and far into the so-called Alluvium deposit, and even to the historic age. “The climate of England was warmer than any now known on the earth.” Sir Chas. Lyell stated, that the only exceptions breaking in upon this uniformly warm climate were temporary changes during the great glacial epochs. This uniform heat could not result from the present auxiliary motion of the earth, nor with any good reason can we assert that the internal fires ever modulated the surface climate so much as one degree. Scientists are a unit in affirming that, for the last four thousand years, there has been no perceptible influence from this cause, upon our climate. A rupture of the earth’s crust, and a change of pole three thousand miles, and a complete change of pole-pointing, resulting in our present alternating seasons, has probably happened within the “historic age,” and probably within five thousand years. This could not be upon the Plutonic basis. Our earth could not part, and swim off upon a globe of melted lava.

(2.) Diatoms are now known to have existed, coequal with the deposit of all stratified rock. This is a well verified fact, but utterly inconsistent with the Plutonic theory. Upon this theory, the early crust of Earth must have remained at a white heat. Water could not lie upon it at all. Hence, both deposits in water and animal life would be out of the question. The fact of both, to say nothing of the well established fact of the sedimentary nature of granite, must ever brand the theory as contradicting the plain facts of nature. These facts equally refute the more modern notion of metamorphism of rock. The very waves of the sea unite in a chorus with the rocks, “The Plutonic foundations of the earth’s crust exist only in the imagination of man.”

Section 2. We will State the Neptunian Theory as a Hypothesis.

1. All matter was created at once, and is correlative.

2. In its primary condition it was in cold gas; diffused in equilibrium in that portion of space now occupied with systems: it follows that gravitation, heat, form, motion and power would in this state be wanting.

3. A power, outside of created matter, must transform this substance from the inertia of rest to that of motion. No sooner was a center of matter gathered, than gravitation acted upon all parts of the universe. The centers of all systems must commence at the same time, or one system would tend to blend with another, and nature would be thrown out of equilibrium. The entire period of gathering must have been with relative exactness. It follows that, at the beginning of motion, all matter must be put in motion. Such gases as were destined to constitute the sun would move directly for it; and such gases as were destined for globes would move in a circle around the center. Such order must have formed the poetic choir of suns, “When the morning stars sang together.”

4. The shaping of systems, sending forth light, heat, gravitation and power, may well be called the first cosmological division of matter. This included the heavens, and prospective planets, as yet without form, and floating in a ring of chaotic gases.

5. At the close of this division, our sun had been gathered out of a field of space, extending each way more than twenty trillion of miles. If these light gases had moved in a straight line at the rate of thirty miles per hour, it would take ninety million of our years to reach the center. Poetically speaking, there existed a condition of matter when force, light, gravitation, motion and form were sleeping in the inertia of rest. This was followed by a period of motion to and about a central sun. Geologically speaking, the earth, as yet, had no form. The matter that would form planets was all floating in a revolving ring about the sun.

The objective view of this ring, with reference to the gathered center, would be a solar firmament. The fluids above had not yet been separated from fluids below, hence the firmament was continuous. Earth, without form, was yet sleeping in chaos. It awoke in form when a second division of matter, with no measured duration as yet, had been accomplished.

6. A vast field of hydrogen united with its equivalent of oxygen; and, in super-heated steam, evolved out into space, and took shape as a globe. These divisions antedate geologic time. Geology must begin with sedimentary rock. The globe of steam must liquify and pass back to the ring, and through it toward the sun. In doing so, it took an atmosphere with it that shows the source of all our rock. When taking its true orbit about the sun, it was a vast globe of cold water, holding, by gravitation, a dense atmosphere in its embrace, rich in material for submarine rock. For a while the deposits were very rapid, and a great quantity of pulp of rock was formed, before any hardening took place. This accounts for the unstratified condition of granite. All the first rocks would be submarine, hidden deep in the sea. Nearly eighty miles depth of deposits took place before dry land could appear.

7. Contrasts marked the beginning and close of the first two divisions. If we follow this order in this third division, we must wait until the Devonian forests showed the renewed touch of the creative hand, giving life in contrast to inorganic matter, with which the globe started into form, and took its position as a planet of our system. Such is the Neptunian theory in part, touching first causes in cosmology.

Section 3. The well established Fact of Science look toward, and defend this Theory.

1. In the relative quantities of sedimentary and lava rock. By far the greater portion of rock of all lands is sedimentary. Lava is the exception. If the source of supply is an internal sea, 7,880 miles in diameter, the reverse of this would most likely be true.

2. In the relative order of the two kinds of rock. Except in very restricted locations, sedimentary rock is at the bottom, in the middle, and at the top of the earth’s crust. Lava has never been found as an integral part of the supposed bottom rock.

3. The constituents of all rock indicate the water theory. All rock is known to be a combination of gases. The coal is admitted to have been gathered from the air, through the agency of vegetation. There are three ways gases may be combined into rock:

(1.) Through the agency of water alone. Such was the primitive granite; and such are the modern stalactites.

(2.) Through the agency of diatoms living in the water. These creatures are absorbents. They absorb the minerals of the water, and form stone. Such are lime, chalk and coral.

(3.) They may be absorbed into vegetation, and then hidden away in the waters, until changed into coal.

(4.) Sandstone and conglomerate are formed from eroded material of other rocks.

(5.) The melting of sedimentary rock in proximity to burning beds of coal has formed the lava.

(6.) Chimneys of rock crossing the lower strata, as of quartz and granite, are now known to be of water deposit. The word dyke is improperly applied to them. These circumstances all point to a center of water.

4. The question with many will arise, How can rock rest upon water? The answer is, Upon the principle of the compressibility of liquids. Water compresses a twentieth part in a thousand atmospheres. Thirty-three feet of water is equal to one atmosphere. Thirty-three thousand feet would compress one-twentieth part. We have a geometrical series, with a ratio of 1.05. In 79-1/2 miles we have twelve and three-fourths terms. The sum of the series will equal 19.127, calling 33,000 feet _one_, without compressibility. Now as the average rock, under salt water, weighs only one and a half times as much as water, we have to multiply twelve and three-fourths by one and a half to get its relative weight. This we find to be 19.125. At 79-1/2 miles in salt water, the weight of water equals rock of the same thickness. As rock displaces only its bulk of water, it will swim like an egg in strong lye at this depth.

5. The explorations which have been made of the Atlantic ocean go to sustain the Neptunian theory.

(1.) They think that they have established the fact that we had a connected land hemisphere, and a hemisphere of water. Lieutenant Maury made such extensive explorations of its contour and bed, as to well nigh demonstrate the above position. His report is, that the trough-like appearance of its bed, the corresponding walls on either side, being nearly perpendicular, showed that the continents were once together. On either side of the Atlantic the sounding line showed a gradual deepening of water for about two hundred miles from shore, when suddenly the depth became too great for measurement. This only confirms what Guizot wrote upon the same subject over fifty years ago.

In a small treatise he endeavored to prove that the continent showed a rent hemisphere of land, once altogether. That it had been rent asunder by some great convulsion of nature, and by water carried away from Africa and Europe, with which North and South America were formerly connected. His theory was, that continents and islands are but floating remnants of a once connected hemisphere.

(2.) Such a rupture could only be maintained on the hypothesis of a center of water. Should the earth open its crust, letting the ocean into its interior of melted lava, it would resemble a bomb.

6. We shall, therefore, assume that we had a land hemisphere, and that the north pole was in the center, and pointed directly to the sun throughout its entire orbit. This would involve the fact that the south half of the globe was in darkness, and locked in ice, as a great Antarctic sea.

(1.) We argue this from the widely extended remains of the polyp-builders. This animalcule inhabits only warm waters. His remains are found widely distributed in every zone from the Lower Silurian up. Iowa and Minnesota show as nice coral in their strata as is now found in the torrid seas.

(2.) From the widely scattered remains of tropical shells. They conclusively show that a warm ocean once covered the continents. Sir Chas. Lyell mentions the tropical nature of the shells about England and Labrador, and that “They indicate a very warm climate, more uniformly warm than any now existing on the Earth.”

(3.) From the remains of saurians; such as the icthyosaurus, which, like the crocodile of the Ganges, is found only in warm waters. Darwin saw one in the bank of the La Plata. No land is without their remains.

(4.) From the widely spread coal beds of Earth. Nothing in geology is better established, than that this is the product of tropical forests. All countries boast of their coal veins. Anthracite coal is often found in the frozen rocks of Greenland. A vein of the best coal, ten feet thick, was found in Nova Zembla, now covered with ice. Good coal is also found in the northern part of Alaska. A genial climate once covered these places.

(5.) From the remains of tropical animals. The evidence is conclusive, that gigantic elephants in countless herds once roamed the arctic regions of Siberia. His remains have been found in all lands, except the Scandinavian peninsula. The mastodon was his near neighbor, and his bones are generally found in the same regions. These animals depended on grass for subsistence. They could not endure a cold winter, nor live where snow lies on the ground for even a short time. We now find their remains where snow now lies from four to eight months in a year, and from two to twenty feet deep. From the region of Russian Siberia alone, more than eighty thousand pounds of their ivory have been sold in a single year. Whence, then, this warm climate, so uniform and general? It cannot be accounted for on internal heat. Heat, sufficient to warm an arctic atmosphere, if coming from the ground, would destroy all animal life, either of water or land. Geologists agree that it has not been affected so much as one degree for the last four thousand years. But we have positive proof that these animals existed down to the period of human existence. They probably have not been exterminated five thousand years. Internal heat cuts no figure in their existence. Only one hypothesis accounts for these tropical phenomena, viz., a land hemisphere, with pole in the center, pointing directly to the sun.

(6.) The sudden change of climate in some past time argues a rapid change in the axillary motion of the earth, preceded by a general rupture of the earth’s crust. It was so sudden, that animals were locked up in arctic ice, and have been preserved to our day, with flesh entire. (See the word Mammoth, W. Dictionary.) The change of pole must have been very sudden, or animals, slain by the convulsion, would have decayed at once.

(7.) The widely spread tropical flowers and fruits sustain this theory. The palm tree flourished in Europe and Central Asia; also in the northern part of North America. The magnolia blossomed at least 80 degrees north. Sir Charles Lyell claims that the earlier vegetation was generally tropical. Grass evidently flourished in all lands, the year round.

7. The nature and condition of the early rock attest the water theory. Had the crust begun upon a ball of lava, at a white heat, the ocean, readily boiling, would be thrown into the air, where it would be condensed, and by gravitation thrown back upon the thin crust. This would often give way, and the whole volume would enter the interior and explode the entire crust into atoms. In such case we should expect to find the under rock a broken mass of displaced lava. But we find the granite to have been so calmly deposited in water, and it retains its place so well, that we split it with the rift of sugar pine. Geologists estimate the earth’s crust from fifty to one hundred miles thick. Upon the Neptunian theory we at least have seventy-five miles without a particle of lava, or so much as the scratch of an iceberg. The early geologies spoke of dykes of lava, injected into granite. The furnace shows these to be water seams. No well attested lava has ever been found there.

8. The period of the great upheavals supports this theory. No grand mountains reared their lofty heads to the clouds, until this side the Carboniferous system of deposits. It is more probable that burning coal must have been the cause of the heat, and the expansion of steam the power, that rent the Earth’s crust; and the eighty miles pressure of waters suddenly liberated would bring up the granite, with all under rock, to the surface. Lava then proceeds from local deposits of melted rock, that had been stratified. If it came from a common center of a primary melted mass, there would be no occasion for ashes. The abundance of these ashes shows the consumption of some burning material, as of coal. The very witnesses which the Plutonic believers have placed upon the stand prove quite the reverse of their theory.

9. Facts show that the substance of all mountain chains was once deposited in the sea. Baron Von Humboldt remarked, “Upon the tallest mountains yet reached by the footsteps of man you may witness the ancient sea bottom.” Conglomerate shells with sand, hardened into rock in the ancient seas, are now found in all lands thousands of feet above the sea.

10. The rise and depressions of the Earth’s crust are proofs of the water theory. Lands having large rivers, carrying more debris or silt into the ocean than the weight of her vegetation, decaying, are rising; as has been demonstrated in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The terraces left attest the truth of this position.

Lands having more vegetation or ice than the weight of the debris carried into the sea are sinking. Witness Greenland and the Pacific Isles. But these islands could not well sink into a sea of burning lava, without letting in the surrounding ocean; in which case the entire crust would be destroyed.

11. The crowning reason for believing in the Neptunian theory is found in the great glacial drift period. The Neptunian hypothesis of the poles of the Earth is sufficient to account for the ice that constituted the drift. The ancient equator would mark the bound between darkness and light; and would be situated so as to manufacture icebergs the whole length of this largest circle.

The depressions of the lowlands beneath the sea are accounted for in the great upheavals. On an average, rock weighed out of water is one and two-thirds times as much as when weighed under water. All the strata of mountains and plateaus lifted from beneath the waters weigh one and two-thirds times what they did before being disturbed.

Geologists tell us that the Earth’s crust was depressed six to seven thousand feet. This would enable the ice to flow over the surface, the bergs being of enormous depth. The lowlands of every continent have been thus plowed. The evidence exists in every valley and far up the sides of all mountains. This evidence is by no means confined to scratches on the rock, but the water-washed gravel and polished pebbles equally attest its action. You can hardly sink a shaft in valley or hill without encountering them. With the present inclination of the Earth’s pole to the elliptic no such quantity of ice can possibly occur. No iceberg has ever yet been seen in tropical waters. There never yet has been enough at one time within historic note, to counteract the influence of the Gulf Stream about Norway and Iceland.

How different the ancient drift! Then the ice penetrated all open seas, caused by submergence. It plowed alike the Brazilian mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and the Appalachian. It chilled the seas to the very center of the submerged hemisphere; and England witnessed the dwelling of the reindeer in her borders, while it lasted. According to Sir Chas. Lyell, the temperature sank from the uniformity of our intensely warm climate to the chilliness of melting ice. The cold was now as uniform as the heat had before been constant. The north pole, pointing directly to the sun, would bring the whole land hemisphere within perpetual sunshine; and consequently, when above the sea, would be in a tropical or semi-tropical zone to the very edge. This climate would continue as long as the land could hold back the ice, which had been accumulated at the equator. But no sooner did the lowlands become submerged, than the ice would change the climate, wherever it could in large quantities accumulate. As it plowed every river, plain, and gulch, the fauna, adapted to the former climate, would naturally lose their existence. Such is the history of the drift. Ninety-seven per cent. of all land animals died. By the slow process of disintegration of the mountains, the hemisphere was again raised, and its former beautiful climate restored.

Section 4. How was such a World adapted to Man or strictly speaking, Man to such a World?

1. The even climate of such a world would tend to his longevity, and be most genial to his feelings.

Man’s nature calls for an even climate. Now by art he tries to even up the climate of the year.

(1.) Less than two-thirds of the lighted hemisphere could have been covered with dry land. Many bodies of water are known to have been included within the areas of land. The pole, pointing directly toward the sun, must have been near Gibraltar. Allowing that land extended in every direction, four thousand miles or more, we should then have an open sea of from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles, intervening between the edge of the hemisphere of land, or perhaps more properly, the quartosphere of land, and the region of perpetual ice.

(2.) On the sunny side of such a globe, being at first entirely water, a rapid evaporation must have taken place; and most, nearest the north pole. This would give rise to currents, both of air and water, to flow toward it, as a source of supply. Counter currents of both would follow. Currents of either starting near the equator would be cold and possess a motion greater than the earth, a few degrees toward the pole. This would send both towards the northeast, until meeting the return currents of wind, which would cause variable winds; but a most genial climate must have surrounded the earth, at least forty degrees wide.

(3.) Such a climate, with such facilities for evaporation, would provide the way for perpetual harvest. The open sea to the edge must have been constantly filled with floating ice. Cold breezes, often laden with thick fog, would float in over the edge of the land. This may account for the long hair which covered the mammoth elephant of Siberia and California. No winds are more penetrating than those coming from large bodies of melting ice; yet under a perpetual sunshine the vegetation must have been abundant.

2. We add by way of recapitulation:

(1.) That everywhere, and with each new discovery in science, the evidence is accumulating that our globe is essentially an immense ball of cold water, with a crust of earth covering the under waters as with a stone; while a portion of water above is held in the earth’s lap.

(2.) Until recently, the continents and islands were together in one vast body, with the axillary center pointing to the sun.

(3.) That fragments of the broken hemisphere have been spread out upon the seas, often standing with just their tops out of water as islands.

(4.) Inasmuch as this Earth is a magnet, the deposit about the pole was of the nature of a load-stone. This existed as a mountain, which by the force of the waters was bodily removed to the present north, nearly three thousand miles. It was thus we had a change of times and seasons.

(5.) That the alternation of day and night, heat and cold, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, are results following this great change in the Earth’s polarity.

(6.) That the existence of the rainbow, caused by the declination of the sun toward the horizon in the Earth’s present motion, is a reminder of what is, and will remain to be, in contrast to what was, and would have been, until the end of time, had no cause occurred making it necessary for this radical change.

Earth’s climate was changed,

(_a_) By changing the magnetic currents of Earth, in removing the pole locally three thousand miles away.

(_b_) By withdrawing the attraction the former pole had for the sun, and pointing it to an empty place in the north, now one degree and a half from Polaris.

(_c_) By inclining the Earth’s pole twenty-three and a half degrees to the ecliptic. “He changeth times and seasons.”