FOOTNOTES
[1] Her mountains by some have been calculated nine miles high; but Dr. Herschell’s telescopes, which magnify 6500 times, have reduced her highest hills to about two miles. Mr. Shroeter apprehends that the mountain Leibnitz is not less than 25,000 feet high. The Craters of the Moon are from 4 to 15 miles diameter. He discovers some new spots on the Moon, and calculates her atmosphere to be 5376 feet high, an height so inconsiderable that it might escape our best telescopes or most minute observations.
[2] It is rather curious how the antients saw so much of him as that his period was tolerably guessed, at least so far back as the days of Cicero.—De Nat. Deor. II. 20. They knew it to be less than the Earth’s: which, though far from accurate, was a nearer calculation than could be then expected. And this is the more remarkable if Cicero had it from Plato, and he from Ægypt and Syria.
[3] If the Earth turned round its axis in 84 minutes and 43 seconds, the centrifugal force would be equal to the power of gravity at the equator; and all bodies there would entirely lose their weight. If the Earth revolved quicker, they would all fly off and leave it.
[4] The velocity of a cannon-ball is about eight miles per minute.
| Of the Comet in its perihelion | 14,600 |
| Of Light | 12,000,000 |
[5] Perhaps the inhabitants of one system may be destined successively to pass from planet to planet, and from systems to other systems. This would answer, on an immense scale, to the analogy existing on Earth. It is stated as a conjecture with much energy and beauty in a late work. Illustrat. of Proph. T. II. p. 557, Anno 1796.
DISSERTATION
ON THE PROBABLE CAUSE OF THE
Deluge.
So perfect are the laws by which this wonderful system is regulated, and so effectual that Self-physic which the Almighty has instituted through all his works, that if any seeming disorder happens in the system, there requires no immediate interposition to prevent or cure the mischief: each body carrying within itself the principles of preservation and cure; an argument of wisdom and foresight worthy of the Deity!
The Planet Jupiter was attracted out of his orbit by the enormous Comet which appeared in the year 1680. The Comet coming across the plane of his track, had a temporary influence upon him; and it is observable, he has not travelled by the same fixed stars since that period which he did before it; and no doubt but his usual motion was momentarily retarded, and the shape of his orbit altered. Now if Jupiter consists of land and water (and by the spots seen on his face it is more than probable) it is possible he might experience a revolution something similar to our flood; for that our flood was occasioned by the near approach of a Comet, is a most natural supposition, and in no wise militates against the scriptural doctrine of that event: it being as easy, and as consistent for the Almighty, to render justice by a secondary cause, as by an immediate interposition. Nor is his attribute of mercy arraigned by the promiscuous destruction the deluge occasioned; for it is evident, by reasoning from his works, that he governs the universe by “general, not by partial laws.”
The vestiges of the Deluge are so remarkable, both on the surface and within the bowels of the Earth, that if examined without prejudice, they prove, I think, beyond a doubt, that awful revolution to have been the work of a Comet. Not that the moisture of its tail drowned the World, as was unphilosophically suggested by Whiston; but if the attraction of the Moon be capable of raising the water of the sea above its common level, what effects might not be supposed from the near approach of a body perhaps many thousand times larger than the Moon? If a tide by such an attraction was raised three or four miles above the level of the Sea, the Earth, by turning on its axis, would have that protuberance dragged over the land, and its surface would be plowed up into those inequalities we call mountains; for that mountains are not of eternal duration, is evident from their growing less, even in the memory of man. For every thing tends to a level. Rains falling on mountains wash down their asperities; this matter bemuds the rivers, and banks out the sea; rocks themselves yield up their fantastic forms to the effects of air, water, and heat; and land has been growing into the water ever since the Deluge. But why should all assemblages of mountains be arranged like little ridges of sand on the sea shore? Doubtless by having been produced by a superior tide, and left to dry by an unreturning sea. Almost all great ranges of mountains run North and South; the Andes of the Cordelleras; the mountains of the Moon in Africa; the Dophranes, Caucasus, Allegany, &c.—the Alps and Pyrenees excepted.
As Comets visit our system in all directions, why might not that in question have its motion from North to South, and dragging the sea after it, determine the mountains to those points of the compass? Whence come the shells and fish bones we meet with on the tops of the highest mountains? We have not discovered any power in nature disposed to work such quantities of them thro’ the bowels of the Earth; and indeed imagination has not yet been so wild as to carry them thither: they are not a fortuitous assemblage of atoms assuming such forms; not lusus naturæ, but bona fide, shells and fish bones, such as we meet with on the sea shore! We find them also deep buried in the bowels of the ground, far from the sea; we find them in rocks, and often converted into stone: nay, may not the fat of fish, joined with vegetable substances, form the bitumen of coal? We have experiments that warrant such a suggestion. Now if ever the Sea was dragged over the surface of the Earth by the attraction of a Comet, these effects must naturally follow.
In digging into the bowels of the Earth, we have still stronger evidence that the flood was occasioned by the near approach of a Comet. It is well ascertained, that the united attraction of every atom of the Earth forms that Earth into a dense ball, and not any particular attraction in its centre.—All matter being therefore affected by this power in proportion to its density, one might conclude that the heaviest bodies would lie deepest, and the lightest near the surface, but this is by no means the case: Coal is lighter than stone; various minerals lie upon light earths, &c. evidently proving, that the general order of nature has at some time been disturbed, and the manner in which matter obeys the laws of gravity disarranged. Hence the philosophic miner finds strata of various density in digging downwards; and in pursuing his vein of ore, finds these strata broken and divided; nay, if he loses the vein, he can easily tell where to find it again, by the manner in which it broke off. In this he never is mistaken: He sees, as it were, through many fathoms of Earth! evidently suggesting, that some revolution on the Earth has broken up its naturally arranged strata, and introduced this “regular confusion.”
The various strata of the Earth seldom lie on one another horizontally: they generally dip; and near the shore commonly incline towards the sea. On the South coast of England, the rocks incline Southerly; on the opposite coast of France they incline to the North. Is it not probable, that at the Deluge, the horizontal stratum was broken between these countries: and the ends falling lowest at the breach, formed the channel, into which the sea flowed, when it lost the influence of the Comet, and again obeyed the power of gravity? Countries separated by narrow channels, universally have their shores inclining towards the sea; shewing that the general geography was at that time altered.
It is true, we have an old doctrine revived, and supported by respectable authority, that mountains were formed originally by those eruptions we call volcanos. The votaries of this theory pronounce the hollows and cavities on the tops and sides of mountains, Craters, or the cups of extinguished volcanos; and if the stone of the mountain be of a bluish colour, then it is declared Lava; and the proof of a volcano having existed there becomes incontrovertible! History, however, affords us very few instances of mountains so formed. Yet this doctrine seems to have received very just authority from the last scientific circumnavigators. The rocks which surround the islands of the Pacific Ocean, generally break off perpendicularly about a mile out at sea, which makes their approach very difficult and dangerous; and as the stratum immediately under the loam of the surface has an ashy, or lava-like appearance, the voyagers very naturally concluded, that the immense number of small islands which stud that extensive ocean, were the product of subaqueous eruptions. Still if I might be allowed to hazard an opinion against such respectable authority, I should rather apprehend that the Pacific Ocean had been once a continent, and that at the Deluge, when the Earth’s surface was disarranged and broken up by the violent motion of the waters, the general body of it sunk beneath the level, or was washed away to other parts, leaving only the more elevated and solid part remaining. For volcanos throw up matter piece-meal; islands, therefore, formed by them, would have a sloping, or gradually sinking shore: whereas the islands of the Great South Sea are surrounded by perpendicular rocks, that sink in that direction to an almost unfathomable depth in the sea. Besides, how can we account for that similarity of manners, customs, colour, and even, language, among the inhabitants of islands so distant, that no mode of navigation they practice could ever make them acquainted, or have any communication with one another? If these islands were thrown up from the bottom of the sea, their inhabitants would not be thrown up with them, and all with the same custom and language. Now if this immense part of the globe was a continent before the Deluge, the inhabitants might be alike; and if the elevated parts were above the subsiding water, (a circumstance more than probable) inhabitants might be saved upon them, with every circumstance of similarity we find among them; for that revolution is not of so remote a date, but remains of antediluvian manners might exist at this time.
Sic undique omni ratione concluditur, mente consilioque divino omnia in hoc mundo ad salutem omnium conservationemque administrari. Quo Spectaculo nihil potest admirabilius esse, nihil pulchrius. Quid tam apertum, tamque perspicuum, cùm cœlum suspeximus, cælestiaque contemplati sumus, quàm aliquod esse Numen præstantissimæ mentis, qua hæc regantur?
CIC. DE NAT. DEOR.
Heads of Mr. Walker, sen.’s
Lectures,
IN CONDUIT-STREET, HANOVER-SQUARE,
Read every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday, during Winter,
AT ONE,
On an Explanatory Apparatus,
The most extensive and elegant.
ONE GUINEA THE COURSE.
I. On the general Properties of Matter, Magnetism, &c.
II. On the Laws of Motion, Mechanics, Machines of Agriculture, Mills, Cranes, &c.
III. On the Principles of Chemistry.
IV. On Pneumatics, or the Weight and Spring of the Air, Musical Vibrations, &c.
V. On the Gasses and new Discoveries in the Air.
VI. On the Hydrostatics, or the Motion and Pressure of Water, Canals, Aqueducts, Machines, Ships, &c.
VII. On Electricity, its Laws, Effects, Circuits, Shocks, &c.
VIII. Ditto, negative and positive, Lightning, Thunder, Galvanism, Medical Electricity, &c.
IX. On Optics, Laws of Light, Vision, Lenses, &c.
X. On the Figure and Motions of the Earth.
XI. On the Phases, Eclipses, &c. of the Moon, and on the Tides.
XII. On the Solar System in general, with the new Discoveries.
This Course may be read privately for 50 Guineas, or to General Subscription amounting to 70 Guineas, on application to Mess. Walker, sen. or jun.
Ipswich: printed by Burrell & Bransby.