C. C. Merriman

“ The subsequent changes which the earth's crust has undergone—aqueous, volcanic, and organic—the working up of the conglomerates and sandstones, the depositing of the deep-sea beds, the overflowing of the traps and lavas, the storing away of the carboniferous treasures, are all the story of every hand-book of geology, and pertain no more to one theory than another of the origin of the rocks. ”

“ The stoppage of motion evolves just the amount of heat that was required to produce that motion.
The greatest triumph of modern science is the splendid induction that all the forces are correlative and indestructible. Not an impulse of motion, of light or heat, or any force, is ever lost. ”

“ To explain this notable exception, might we conjecture that hydrogen is a more recent production than the worlds themselves? It has been observed time and again to burst up from the nethermost regions of the sun with inconceivable force, as if it were the pent-up product of a volcano, and to throw up columns of its flaming gas, in one case 200,000 miles high. And these great outbursts of hydrogen are always the precursors of the dark, sunken spots in the photosphere. ”

“ And I think it is in the highest degree probable that there is in the universe precisely enough repulsive force or heat to overcome all this inherent power of attraction. When all motion of the masses and of the atoms is resolved into repulsive energy, and brought to bear on the elements of matter, I imagine that they must completely fill the bounds or the infinity of space. ”

“ Or, if it were conceded that silicon ever formed the surface of the earth, then all other materials of what is now the crust must have been gases above it; and, as nine-tenths of the elements in vapor are heavier than oxygen—many of them more than ten times as heavy—this gas could never have even touched this imaginary sea of silicon. The oxidation, then, was only possible in the regions of the atmosphere where oxygen existed and abounded. There only among the free-moving gases could the incalculable amount of heat evolved in the combination be carried off. ”

“ In fact, we must either suppose that the earth was created as a fiery liquid globe, for which we have no warrant, or we must follow back to the time when its vapors were scattered in space, unreflecting and impenetrable to light—when the earth was "without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." ”

“ When, now, we turn back a few of the leaves which tell of the past condition of our planet, we immediately see that the same causes have been at work in recent geological times on a much more extensive scale—in fact, that they have been the chief agents in composing and modifying the present surface of the earth outside of the tropics. Over all the northern portions of Europe, Asia, and North America, are found the unmistakable evidences of extensive and recent ice-work. ”

“ Thus in the rapid and ever-speeding movements of the heavenly bodies there is stored up the ever-increasing reserve of heat that is liberated from the great contest with gravity. But in the progress of concentration there comes a time when the atoms of matter have approached each other sufficiently near for other forces of attraction, equally correlative of heat, to come into play—chemical affinity between molecules of unlike nature, and cohesion between those of like kind. ”

“ Again, for a warm and exuberant climate to extend into the arctic zone, there was necessary one of those great summers of considerable eccentricity, without the excessive drainage, which an unusually large accumulation of ice in the opposite hemisphere would necessitate. Each summer cycle of coal forests, or of reptile monsters, implies, not only a long visit, and a high evaporating power of the sun, but also the addition, to the opposite polar regions, of a weight of ice only sufficient to draw the waters from a small part of the low and flat lands of the warmer hemisphere. ”

“ The winter and the summer seasons have again become equal in length; and the sun is just half its time on the north side of the equator. The great ice-shroud is now being gradually withdrawn. Where it abuts on deep waters, enormous icebergs are broken off and float away to the south, carrying bowlders and soil and whatever it may have picked up in its slow course down to the sea. Where it terminates in shallow waters or on the land, its effect is to produce such an arrangement and diversity of soils and such a peculiar outline of country as no other agency could ever have brought about. ”

“ Those of attraction have now in each world expended their utmost possible energy, and are holding all the forms of matter combined and compacted in a cold and rigid embrace. The forces of repulsion have entirely abandoned the contest, and are either vibrating through the unknown realms of space, or are locked up in the swift and complicated motions of the heavenly bodies. It is probable that by far the greater part of the repulsive forces thus exists in the form of motion. ”

“ To an observer on any unseen world among the stars, our sun should have appeared in those times as a brilliant double, or multiple star, around which nine lesser companions have shone out for a season, and then one after the other folded themselves up in darkness. ”

“ So we, finding that the world has certainly at some time been subjected to a heat at least sufficient to volatilize nearly every known substance, and that there are laws of Nature by which, through periods of time immensely long, the earth and the planets might have been rolled up from a gaseous nebula and bowled off in their mighty revolutions, have just as much right to say that it was so, as we have to say that the American forests grew, or that the Triassic beds were deposited. ”

“ The winds and the water-currents have always helped to increase the difference in temperature which a considerable eccentricity of the earth's orbit must always have produced between the northern and southern halves of our globe. It matters but little which of the two—the ocean-currents or the astronomical causes—have produced the greater effect, since it is certain that they have ever coöperated in one and the same direction. ”

“ The condensation of gases gives out heat in direct proportion to the contraction of volume. The attraction of gravitation, not only between masses but between all the particles of matter, increases in the inverse square of the diminishing distance. From these two principles it can be mathematically shown that in the contraction of each great world-nebula heat would be set free in the precise proportion of the increase of atomic attraction; or, in other words, that it would take the exact amount of heat-force that had been released, to separate the atoms again to their original distance apart. ”

“ If the vapor of silicon follows the general rule—that the density of gases is in proportion to their atomic weights—then it was but a fraction heavier than oxygen, and therefore not far below it in the atmospheric strata. The unceasing commotion of the elements would soon have brought this first cloud-mist of silicon into contact with oxygen, to which it has a strong affinity under high heat. Oxidized, and in molten drops of silica, or crystals of quartz, this new-formed material commenced its descent toward the centre of gravity—the first creation from the primordial elements. ”

“ The wave-theory of light and radiant heat presupposes the existence of an ethereal medium pervading all space. It must be a medium of material atoms held in equipoise by a balance of forces, for it is evident there could be no wave-motion unless there was something to move, and something, too, having the attributes of matter in a state of extreme mobility or fluidity. There is no other conceivable way by which light could reach us from the sun and stars except through this all-pervading form of matter. ”

“ Distance from the sun, whatever theory may be, does not seem to have much effect upon climate. The southern summers, when the sun is over 3,000,000 miles nearer the earth, are said to be even some degrees cooler than the same seasons in corresponding localities of the northern hemisphere. And to take an extreme example, Mars, which is 50,000,000 miles farther from the sun than the earth is, has snow-lines about its poles which reach no nearer the equator than on our planet in corresponding seasons. ”

“ This great flood of thermal waters spreads out in the Northern Atlantic, imparting to Europe a climate corresponding to countries twenty degrees south of it on this side of the ocean. There is, of course, an under-current from the Arctics to the equator, exactly compensating this enormous northward flow of the surface-waters. The same process and effect are repeated in the Pacific Ocean; and the great Japan Stream robs the southern hemisphere, for the benefit of our Pacific States, only in a degree less than does the Gulf Stream for the benefit of Europe. ”

“ Instead of holding the atoms apart, the work which it now has to do under the form of motion is, to prevent the masses from falling into each other. It is this motion—the celestial revolutions—which keeps the worlds apart, and allows each to work out its destiny under the aggregating forces, without interference from any other. Up to a certain point of condensation, which is previous to the radiation of heat into space, if this motion were at any time stopped, it would be resolved into just the amount of heat necessary to expand the mass again to its original dimensions. ”

“ For it is evident that an attracting body may be at the same time drawing toward itself a million other like bodies, or none at all, without change of its power of attraction. In like manner the magnet has a definite lifting power whether it is actually holding up a weight or not. If this attribute of matter is not operative, or but partially so, it is because heat, or motion, or some repellent force, is holding the atoms or the masses at a distance from each other, and thus opposing the exercise of it. ”

“ Precisely the same evidences are found in South America, and, according to Agassiz, even much nearer the equator than in North America. We have again to search our astronomy for causes many times more powerful than any thing we have yet found, for differences of polar temperatures.
The earth is made to revolve in an orbit drawn out of the circular form by the combined attractions of the other planets, Jupiter carrying the controlling influence. When the average of all these forces for long periods is more in one direction than in another, our planet is drawn away from the sun on that side. ”

“ THE centre of gravity of the earth is the centre of the sphere formed by the surface of the oceans; or rather, owing to the flattening of the earth at the poles, it is a point equally distant, in opposite directions, from the level of the sea. The waters, being free to move, must of necessity conform themselves to this equidistance from the gravitating centre of the whole mass. ”

“ In higher latitudes it is still less; and at the poles nothing. Therefore, whenever the air moves north or south on the surface of the earth, it will carry with it a less or greater velocity of rotation than the places it passes over, and will turn into an easterly or westerly wind, according as it approaches or recedes from the equator. In the region of the sun's greatest heat, the air, rarefied and lightened, is continually rising, and cooler currents come in on both sides to take the place of the ascending volume. ”