Benjamin Franklin

“ The original movement of the parts towards their common centre would form a whirl there; which would continue upon the turning of the new-formed globe upon its axis, and the greatest diameter of the shell would be in its equator. If by any accident afterwards the axis should be changed, the dense internal fluid, by altering its form, must burst the shell, and throw all its substance into the confusion in which we find it. I will not trouble you at present with my fancies concerning the forming the rest of our system. Superior beings smile at our theories, and at our presumption in making them. ”

“ While the iron continues soft and hot, it is only a temporaly magnet; if it cools or grows hard in that situation, it becomes a permanent one, the magnetic fluid not easily resuming its equilibrium. Perhaps it may be owing to the permanent magnetism of this globe, which it had not at first, that its axis is at present kept parallel to itself, and not liable to the changes it formerly suffered, which occasioned the rupture of its shell, the submersions and emersions of its lands, and the confusion of its seasons. ”

“ And as the force of expansion in dense air when heated, is in proportion to its density, this central air might afford another agent to move the surface, as well as be of use in keeping alive the central fires; though, as you observe, the sudden rarefaction of water, coming into contact, without those fires, may be an agent sufficiently strong for that purpose, when acting between the incumbent earth and the fluid on which it rests. ”

“ That the air being a fluid whose parts repel each other, though drawn to the common centre by their gravity, would be densest towards the centre, and rarer as more remote; consequently all bodies lighter than the central parts of that air, and immersed in it, would recede from the centre, and rise till they arrived at that region of the air which was of the fame specific gravity with themselves, where they would rest ”

“ If they occasion any new enquiries, and produce a better hypothesis, they will not be quite useless. You see I have given a loose to imagination; but I approve much more your method of philosophising, which proceeds upon actual observation, makes a collection of facts, and concludes no farther than those facts will warrant. ”

“ The globe being now become a perfect magnet, we are perhaps safe from any future change of its axis. But we are still subject to the accidents on the surface, which are occasioned by a wave in the internal ponderous fluid ”

“ I can conceive that in the first assemblage of the particles of which this earth is composed, each brought its portion of the loose heat that had been connected with it, and the whole, when pressed together, produced the internal fire which still subsists. ”

“ The present polar and equatorial diameters differing from each other near ten leagues, it is easy to conceive, in case some power should shift the axis gradually, and place it in the present equator, and make the new equator pass through the present poles, what a sinking of the waters would happen in the present equatorial regions, and what a rising in the present polar regions ”