Centripetal Flow.
—The different motions of the globe affect all bodies on its surface, so as to appear to the inhabitants as if the whole were at rest; supposing thence, that the centre of the earth is the centre of motion, the following may be considered probable consequences:—The general pressure being less at the centre and axis than on the surface of the earth, obliges the medium of space to flow through the atmosphere and entire surface, centripetally, to the centre, thence along the axis, carrying with it electric matter, and has exit at the poles, which polarizes the globe and produces the boreales. The centripetal flow retains the atmosphere to the earth; precipitates bodies from the air in a centripetal direction; accelerates the descent; and retards all motion not in its own direction: it prevents vertical ascent being equal to impulse, the difference being employed in bearing against the flow. The flow makes bodies ponderate or have weight, causes the dip and direction of the compass-needle.
FORMATION OF A PLANET.
That cannot be considered a chaotic state from which the eternal order sprung; nor that a created body, the substance of which previously existed, which was and is common to all bodies. Hence it may be concluded that a planet is a natural production, equally as the instantly-formed ponderous atmospheric aërolite, supposed to have come from the moon.
From the elementary to the aëriform, thence the aqueous state, seems the simplest and primeval order of atomic combination. Hence it is conceivable, that, were an immense volume of the general elements collected together in the regions of space, and subjected to extreme pressure, the result would be an aqueous sphere, with an attached residue of the same elements to serve as a primeval atmosphere to receive increase from future mists and exhalations. While aqueous and with one side only of the sphere facing the sun, the elements of the water cannot avoid being in a state of constant disturbance and transfer, productive of combinations, formations, and precipitations until the equilibrium has obtained, leaving ultimately the solid masses so formed, as they would now appear were the ocean away: the original water, from having contributed the elements of the newly-formed solids, being reduced in quantity and changed in quality, is left as the ocean is at present, saline. During the intermediate plastic state, and as induration increased, the endowed fertility may have produced kinds, many of which have become extinct.
It may be further assumed, that deep within the planet the elements abound in neither kind nor quantity as at the surface and in the atmosphere; and if the imponderable oxygen element be absent, an immense mass of ice would form the nucleus of the earth, the occasional melting at the surface of which, in the neighbourhood of sulphurous and ferruginous masses, may cause those volcanic eruptions from which no region of the earth is free. Thus it would seem that a planet may be the natural formation of an instant, requiring time for completion, and may be an everyday circumstance in space.
The strict inquirer into terrestrial magnetism has to ascertain, whether the non-conducting central ice be not the means, some how, of separating the correlative fluids which the centripetal flow carries with it along the axis through the Poles, and which make the Poles magnetic opposites; or, whether, of these fluids, one only is transmissible through ice.
A planet may be subject to wear and the fertility to decrease, thence to be uninhabitable, as Herschel describes the very probable condition of the moon, owing to the rapid motion through space, solar effects and cultivation. The idea is neither gloomy nor a threatened dread. Man was born to leave this world, and live where God has pleased. Some anticipate the night, when we shall see "our God in terror, and our world on fire!"—"undoing all, as all had never been," or made in vain. But He who blessed and never cursed his works, whose mercy and goodness endureth for ever, and who will "save both man and beast," is not a God of terror!