plete the figure of rotation, its impetuosity must have been irresistible, and its burden of debris, sand, and silt very great; while the deposition of those water-borne materials would be accelerated in proportion to their respective masses; the blocks and boulders being first strewed over the surface nearest to the places of their origin, modified in some respect by local influences; the finely comminuted sand and silt being swept onwards as far as the waters themselves, and assisting to round off, and to fill up the rugged acclivities necessarily arising from the augmented centrifugal impetus of the equatorial regions, where the recumbent concentric shell of the non-rotating earth was most shattered, and farthest thrown from the centre, that it might complete the figure of rotation.

At the same time, we took occasion to point out, that, as the waters rushed from either polar extremity towards their common equatorial centre, they would, naturally, by reason of the latitudinal differences of that newly-impressed force, perform a somewhat spiral movement, and carry with them, in that peculiar direction, whatever matter they held in suspension; and that, although it may be impossible to identify the rolled pebbles, sand, silt, or mud, which would be constrained to perform the greater spiral curve, and by their means to prove this westerly direction of the waters to their greater extent; yet, as the immense boulders and blocks can be identified with the mountain chains from which they have been torn, they will be found-wherever they have been so traced-to have been swept in a westerly course, from whichever side of it they moved onwards towards the equator; and thereby they will furnish additional testimony, not only to the correctness of the Dynamical Theory, which accounts for, and requires those phenomena to render it complete; but, likewise, they will afford evidence which cannot be doubted, that the earth, during the transit of those boulders, blocks, and travelled debris, possessed the identical exterior form which it now does; for they are found embedded on its surface; and, like nature's finger-posts, they continue still to point the course which their watery conductor took during the first rotation of their common pedestal.

Confirmatory evidence of a similar kind, as well as strong

testimony to the beneficence of the Creator, were deduced from the unconformable position of the groups overlying the coal measures, which, consisting of mechanically suspended debris, were assumed to have been deposited upon immense surfaces of accumulated vegetable matter, and while they protected these from being swept away by the rush of waters, and general commotion amongst the mineral masses, likewise covered over and retained their gaseous exhalations, confined their bituminous substances, and consolidated, by the pressure of their enormous weight, the vegetable surfaces into the great independent coal-measures of the present day; the depositories, alike, of our needful fuel, and the sources of our comfort, and of our national industry and wealth.

Having reached this point in the evidences, we were enabled to bring forward, in continuation, those arising from the concurring opinion of geologists, with respect to an evidently sudden and universal change which the earth is considered to have experienced in its geological structure, and in the character of the plants and animals which tenanted its surface at the precise epoch of its geognostic history, when this theory demands that such a change-characterized by its geological developments, as well as by the nature of its animal inhabitants, and of its vegetable existences—should have taken place. Previously it was a non-rotating sphere, everywhere surrounded by a dark and atmosphereless ocean of waters, and unknown to external light or heat; now it is a spheroid of rotation, diversified by land and sea, hill and dale, revolving around its axis before the invigorating light of the resplendent sun; and well might it be expected, therefore, to present a widely different geological structure, and to be the abode of races of animals altogether different from the former, and endowed with other and more important faculties; its surface being likewise covered by vegetable existences of a totally distinct character from the submerged plants of the primitive earth.

This closed the long and interesting list of evidences afforded by those sciences which have reference to the more intimate character and geological structure of the external crust of our planet, and to the vestiges of animal and vegetable formations

found embedded on its surface, and which we offered as irrefragible proof, as far as they went, to establish the fundamental doctrines of the Dynamical Theory-the previous nonrotation of the earth during a period sufficiently protracted to admit of the deposition of its stratiform masses; and its subsequent rotation by means of the expansive impetus of the primary light; and we shall resume and finish this summary in the concluding section which immediately follows.

CONCLUSION.

PART II.

FROM THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES TO THE FORMATION OF PULMONIC CREATURES; THE CLOSING EVIDENCES IN FAVOUR OF THE DYNA

MICAL THEORY.

TOWARDS the termination of the preceding part of this summary we had reached a point, which exhausted the evidences derivable from the geological developments of the earth's crust, and the organic exuviæ everywhere found on its terraine surface; but, presuming we might be able to acquire some further corroboration of the general assumption, that the change in the external form of the globe, from a non-rotating sphere to a spheroid of rotation, was coeval with the epoch alluded to in Scripture, for the formation of the primitive light; from the kindred and exact science of astronomy, we followed up the subject by enquiring whether, in reality, there is anything said by astronomers, which might lead to the conclusion, that a change of form, such as we have assumed, did become perceptible, about the period in question, by means of a perturbation thereafter in the motion of the earth amongst the other heavenly bodies of our system: and we found, that there is a cycle of extreme duration, the retrogradation of the equinoctial points, occasioned by the action of attractive forces upon the redundant matter accumulated about the equatorial regions; and that the rotation of the earth acts as a counterpoise to prevent this spheroidal shell of accumulated matter from causing the earth so to alter its intersection with the ecliptic, as ever ultimately to coincide with the plane of that circle. Those conjoint influences.

passable barriers of the rushing primitive waters as they accumulated in the equatorial region.

Having thus disposed of the results which proceeded from protorotation on the surface of the earth, and alluding to those which occurred amongst the mineral portions in a general way, we next undertook to investigate, more particularly, the probable consequences of the centrifugal impetus arising from diurnal motion, upon the horizontal mineral masses, arranged in superposition, as we have supposed them to have been, at the bottom of the primeval ocean; and applying, in prosecution of this, the same mechanical rule to which allusion was made above, we came to the conclusion, that as the underlying, denser, primary masses obeyed the law thus brought to bear upon them, and retreated farther from the centre than the lighter strata, they would, in some cases, pierce through their superincumbent associates, in others they would be raised up in conjunction, and in many instances both of these consequences would partially take place: and the primary amorphous masses would penetrate, while, at the same time, they elevated the stratiform rocks along with themselves; and on reaching the height to which the motion impelled them, they would be found the one reclining on the shoulders of the other, and together stretched into lengthened irregular ridges, with conical projections throughout their whole extent. It is scarcely necessary to add, that in pursuance of the method laid down, we compared the theoretical conclusion with the announcements of experimental geologists, and ascertained, that such are precisely the conditions in which the rocky materials of the earth's crust are found to be; while the evidences of their having assumed those forms and relative positions after much movement, friction, and evolution of heat are everywhere apparent, geologically and mineralogically. "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and they stood fast."

The attainment of this advanced position in the general argument, enabled us by interweaving the celebrated solution, given negatively by M. La Place, to the question of the possibility or otherwise, of the ocean ever again overflowing the earth, with the evidences everywhere abounding of such having once really been the case, to conclude, that the conti