We mean to bore us, at a venture

Some auger holes through Hutton's centre,

again, because as we shall see by and by, they must all be "disintegrated," alias washed into the ocean.

2. Moreover, Dr. Hutton's followers will thank you to suppose that all this matter, raised as aforesaid, consisted originally of unstratified rocks, which, though they are properly called primitive as the the most ancient of the whole family of rocks, yet they are in fact nothing better than the scrapings or "disintegrations" of primal continents which existed before the commencement of the last edition of the earth.

3. You will please to believe that all calcareous matters are formed from the detritus of the primitive rocks, delivered by rivers into the sea, and there, after having been modified by central heat, protruded above water as before mentioned.

4. You will likewise be convinced that no metal, mineral or lapidose substance, can possibly be formed except at the bottom of the ocean, in the laboratory of Dr. Hutton.*

5. That although some foolish people have supposed that the sea has been subsiding for centuries, yet, as we know that the continents are crumbling into the ocean, you will conclude that we shall at length find all our dry land under water, and the sea increased in proportion to the square feet of earth deposited under its surface.

* And therefore the writer of the article "Earth" in the Encyclopedia Britannica is wrong in attempting to overturn this fine fabrick of philosophy, by making it appear that metals, minerals, fossils, &c. are continually forming by accretion, &c. on the earth's surface. Indeed, that writer has laid a heavy hand on all the theories of our modern earthmongers.

Thus give an unexpected vent,

To Hutton's fires in prison pent.

We'll fan his furnace by a pair

Of bellows made of Franklin's air, 87

6. That it is evident that this central heat, having raised its continents, and put proper supporters under them, will go to work in due time, and raise new continents from the bottom of the ocean. Thus the area of Dr Hutton's centre will be enlarged, till the earth and moon will come in contact, if our plan hereafter mentioned should not check such progression. But we forbear, lest when it is ascertained that "the present continents are all going to decay and their materials descending into the ocean," it may cause some disagreeable sensations among our friends, who are speculators in American lands, whose property, it seems, according to Dr. Hutton's theory, is about to take French leave of its worthy proprietors.

When you have thoroughly saturated your faculties with this theory, we will oblige you with a fresh solution from Dr. Darwin, compounded as follows:

"The variation of the compass can only be accounted for by supposing the central parts of the earth to consist of a fluid mass, and that part of this fluid is iron, which requiring a greater degree of heat to bring it into fusion than glass or other metals, remains a solid ore. The vis inertia of this fluid mass with the iron in it occasions it to perform fewer revolutions than the crust of solid earth over it; and thus it is gradually left behind, and the place where the floating iron resides, is pointed to by the direct or retrograde motion of the magnetick needle."

The waves of which are useful found

In revolutions under ground. 88

87 Of bellows made of Franklin's air.

In the first paper of the third volume of Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, you will find certain "Conjectures concerning the formation of the earth," &c. in a letter from Dr. B. Franklin, to the abbé Soulavie; which we would prescribe as tonicks to Hutton's system. The American sage informs us, that in the course of some observations in Derbyshire, in England, he "imagined that the internal part (of the earth) might be a fluid more dense, and of greater specifick gravity than any of the solids we are acquainted with; which therefore might swim in or upon that fluid. Thus the surface of the globe would be a shell, capable of being broken and disordered by any violent movements of the fluid on which it rested. And as air has been compressed by art so as to be twice as dense as water, in which case, if such air and water could be contained in a strong glass vessel, the air would be seen to take the lowest place, and the water to float above and upon it;* and as we know not yet the degree of density to which air may be compressed; and M. Amontons calculated, that its density increasing as it approached the centre in the same proportion as above the surface, it would at the depth of leagues be heavier than gold, possibly the dense fluid occupying the internal parts of the globe might be air compressed. 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 subterraneous fires: though as you observe, the sudden rarefaction of water coming into contact with those fires may

* I am afraid after all, this would turn out but a bubble,

also be an agent sufficiently strong for that purpose, when acting between the incumbent earth and the fluid on which it rests.

"If one might indulge imagination in supposing how such a globe was formed, I should conceive, that all the elements in separate particles being originally mixed in confusion, and occupying a great space, they would as soon as the almighty fiat ordained gravity or the mutual attraction of certain parts, and the mutual repulsion of other parts to exist, all move towards their common centre: 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 matters lighter than the central part 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 same specifick gravity with themselves, where they would rest; while other matter, mixed with the lighter air would descend, and the two meeting would form the shell of the first earth, leaving the upper atmosphere nearly clear.* The original movement of the parts towards their common centre would naturally form

* Now, if it should happen that the comparative levity of air consists in the repellant powers of its particles, and those bodies which have the greatest cohesion are most prone to gravitate, there “needs Dr. Franklin's ghost to tell us,” what should hinder bodies of greater specifick gravity from riddling down between his particles of air. No man but Dr. Franklin could have caught the fugitive air under the shell of the first earth, and pressed it till it became heavier than gold by a hurly burly of elements "mixed in confusion."

For that your worships know, or may know,
Adds mightily to a volcano.

a whirl there, which would continue in 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," [viz. by the impinging of a Buffon's comet's tail or the delivery of Darwin's moon] "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!" There's an air gun for your worships!

Now, if we did not possess a particular partiality for the sage who formed this system, we should probably break up his Eolian cave, even at the risk of creating half a hundred hurricanes. For should we open a vent as large as a needle's point into this magazine of compressed air, you would instantly be assailed by "an other guess whistling" than was the tempest tost Trojan fleet when

Una Eurusque Notusque ruunt creberque procellis.
S8 In revolutions under ground.

"The globe," says the doctor-Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. iii. p. 4. "being now become a permanent magnet, we are, perhaps, safe from any future change of its axis. But we are subject to the accidents on the surface which are occasioned by a wave in the internal ponderous fluid." The doctor then proceeds, and affords us a very fine earthquake by the agitation of this central fluid.

* The "Monthly Reviewer" of our late edition of Tractoration, would have it that OURSELF was a Scotchman "frae the north," &c. Now here's a yankee phrase, merely to convince you that they were out in their conjectures.