CREATION OF THE EARTH.
Science informs us that our planetary system existed originally as a nebulous sphere, vaporized by heat, which appears to have been the con dition of the universe under the original laws of creative force. If the ponderous or solid matter of our system was again reduced to vapor so light that it would not weigh a grain to the cubic mile, it would not fill our sphere, even within the orbit of Neptune. We know how readily all ponderous or solid bodies are reduced to vapor by heat, since water arises in steam at 212° and platina is vaporized at 2000°, while the lighter petroleums escape in the atmosphere of winter, and mercury evaporates in summer heat. But these facts are not more evident to us than the laws of condensation and gravitation. If heat vaporizes all solid bodies, cold condenses them; and we can readily conceive how a nebulous mass of vapor may contract by condensation and unite by the laws of gravitation, until masses are formed, from the size of meteors to the dimensions of worlds. Larger bodies attract smaller ones. Meteors fall towards the earth, as the earth is attracted by the sun, and only prevented from falling into it by the velocity of its motion.
To illustrate further, we may state that motion produces heat, as heat produces motion or force. The hammer striking the anvil produces heat, while rock abrading rock strikes fire. But, should our planet be suddenly arrested in its course, the shock would generate more heat than the com bustion of fourteen times its bulk of coal. Assuming the mass of matter composing the earth to be equal to water in its capacities for heat, it would be fused and vaporized by 17,200 degrees, and the earth or its vapors, after being thus brought to rest, would, of course, fall into the sun, and be thus further rarefied by an additional degree of heat 400 times greater.* In this light we can readily comprehend the natural forces or processes which tend to dissolve or unite all bodies, however large or small. It must be observed, notwithstanding the readiness of solids to escape in vapor, that no atom of matter is lost, and that none of the natural forces are wasted, since they return to the earth, or their original sphere, in equal weight or force. A common instance may be given in the combustion of coal under our steam-boilers. Here we see both water and coal consumed, and can see no return of the products of combustion : yet they return, nevertheless, in rain or gas to the earth and vegetation,—and not only return in full weight, but by their dynamic effects give a creative force, which is employed in a thousand labors by the ingenuity of man. They create a tempest of steam behind the piston of the steam-engine, equal to the force of a hundred hurricanes.
Having thus given faint glimpses of the natural causes controlling and governing the creation of our planetary system, since we cannot be more explicit, we may now contemplate our earth as condensed from the heated vapors of the nebulous mass, launched forth from the sun—a fiery ball— on its endless path through space.
In its swift course through space, or its orbit round the sun, our earth gradually contracted, and a primitive crust of granite encased the liquid ball, and gradually the condensation increased the thickness of the igneous or primitive rocks, as the inanimate earth, clad in dark and chaotic vapors, pursued its way. But as the crust becomes thick and cool, or no longer
able to keep the surrounding vapors in a state of rarefaction, they return to the earth in the form of water or liquids; and thus we have the first day of creation, when light first illuminated the darkness.
When the vapors which shrouded the earth in endless night were con densed in rain and now enveloped it in water and steam, the second day of creation was ushered in, when God divided the waters. But from the first struggling rays of light which penetrated the vapors, until they were con densed from the "firmament" and the sun and the moon gave their light to the earth, long ages must have intervened; while nature prepared our globe by earthquake and volcano, in mountains and valleys, for the suc ceeding changes which took place during the third day. Then the waters rushed together in the deep places, and the elevated portions appeared as dry land, and grass and trees first made their appearance. But though mountain and sea first appeared during the third period of creation, the formation of the sedimentary rocks did not stop then. The subterranean heat was too great to admit of the existence of animal life in the water or the air; the earth still quaked and throed with internal fires, and volcanoes still vomited their lava upon the boiling waters.
During the second period, probably, the metamorphic or crystalline sedi mentary strata were formed; and during the third, our palpeozoic formation was deposited, its closing event being the production of the coal measures.
The "fourth day," or period, broke upon a comparatively quiet world, rich in its green freshness, and gilded by the first light of the sun and moon that had penetrated its dark and vapory atmosphere. The cerulean blue took the place of the vapory haze, and the great lights of heaven now "ruled the day" and the night. Still the work of creation went on, and mountain succeeded mountain, here and there, where lakes and seas had existed. But the general, almost the universal, production of the stratified crust of the earth was limited even before the creation of coal, and almost suspended at the close of the fourth period.
The "fifth day" of Moses, or the fifth geological period, is marked as the dawn of the present or existing animal life: those hitherto created were low in the scale of beings, and but few were preserved through the violent changes and commotions of the primitive earth.
The sixth period witnessed the earth in the beauty and perfection of its finished state, and all animate and inanimate nature existed as it now exists, to attest the power and wisdom of the Creator.
Having thus rapidly and briefly attempted to run a parallel between our geological formations and the periods of the Mosaic creation, we shall now proceed to give a practical, though equally brief, exposition of the geological formations and periods as they exist in the lithological structure of the earth's crust.