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Each orifice will then give birth

To grand satellites for earth,
Disploded dreadfully! dear me!

Like Darwin's moon from southern sea.

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How will the universe admire

When my vast bickering moons of fire
In grand Darwinian style shall rise

Like burning mountains through the skies!

Although our grand explosions must
Destroy good doctor Burnet's crust, 89

89 Destroy good doctor Burnet's crust.

We should be able to make much more rapid progress in our sublime flights of poetry, were we not under the necessity of dismounting from our Pegasus every ten paces in order to give your worships a hoist, and thus enable your ponderosities, like Mr. Pope's " slugs," to keep up with us. It is a thousand to one if any one of your college has ever heard of Dr. Burnet, of earth-manufacturing memory. But it is absolutely necessary that you should know something of Dr. Burnet's theory before you can comprehend the stanza to which this note has reference. You will therefore shut up this my volume and beg from some circulating library, or borrow Dr. Burnets theory of the earth's formation, and when you have diligently drudged through that treatise, we will again take you in tow, and permit you to accompany us but non passibus equis, till our muse salutes you with procul! O procul! &c.

From candle savings we'll endeavour
To make his shell as good as ever.

Now when we've made our batch of moons,
Philosophers, unless they're loons,

Will, though we're such a surly gnostick

Name one of them "GREAT DOCTOR CAUS

TICK!"

Could tell what time, on Hutton's notion,
Would "duck" the earth beneath the ocean ;9%

90 Would "duck" the earth beneath the ocean.

It would be the highest act of injustice and ingratitude to professor Playfair not to own that he supplied us with the principal principles necessary for the solution of this stupendous problem. See what he says! and see how happily it is said!-as follows:

"It is highly interesting to trace up the action of causes with which we are familiar, to the production of effects, which at first seem to require the introduction of unknown and extraordinary powers; and it is no less interesting to observe, how skilfully nature has balanced the action of all the minute causes of waste, and rendered them conducive to the general good. Of this we have a most remarkable instance, in the provision made for preserving the soil, or the coat of vegetable mould, spread out over the surface of the earth. This coat, as it consists of loose materials, is easily washed away by the rains, and is continually diminished; its lower parts being transported from higher

And when and how would be unfurl'd,
A new edition of the world.9"

to lower levels, and finally delivered into the sea. This effect is visible to every one; the earth is removed not only in the form of sand and gravel, but its finer particles suspended in the waters, tinge those of some rivers continually, and those of all occasionally; that is, when they are flooded or swollen with rains. The quantity of earth thus carried down varies according to circumstances. It has been computed, in some instances, that the water of a river in a flood contains earthy matter suspended in it, amounting to more than the two hundred and fiftieth part of its own bulk." Here you find our data.

The gentleman proceeds with a little too much circumrotundity for us to quote him to show that the disintegration of rocks supplies this wear and tear of the vegetable mould of continents and islands, washed into the sea as before stated.

There are some other sublime matters mentioned by the learned doctor, and adduced in proof of his central heats, respecting the penetration of wood by melted flint !! Of which you must say " credo quia non possibile est."

Now, if we were not mortally adverse to the spoiling of a beautiful theory, we should set it with its wrong end uppermost in a moment, by something like what follows.

We should say that metals, minerals, and fossils are daily forming and increasing by accretion and certain other mysterious operations of nature, on and near the surface of the earth, without the aid of Dr. Hutton's lamina in the bottom of the ocean, or fusion by central heat.

Like us was never man besides

For managing aerial tides,

We should also observe, that there is a continual accumulation of earth in many places, caused by the recrements of vegetable and animal substances; which vegetable and animal substances are supplied, originally, in a great measure with nourishment by vapours and clouds raised from the sea; and that it is very possible that this accumulation, which is greatest on high lands and mountains, covered with woods, in consequence of their superiour attraction of such vapours, may be able to counterbalance the so much dreaded "detritus," which seems to threaten them with eventual submersion in the ocean. But we make it a point never to kick over the theory of a fine philosopher.

91 A new edition of the world.

Mr. Playfair upon Hutton, having fairly washed the world under water, proceeds to sketch the outlines of a picture, which our masterly hand could alone finish.

"We are not," he says, "however, to imagine, that there is no where any means of repairing this waste; for, on comparing the conclusion at which we are now arrived, viz. that the present continents are all going to decay, and their materials descending into the ocean, with the proposition first laid down, that these same continents are collected from materials which must have been collected from the decay of former rocks, it is impossible not to recognise two corresponding steps of the same progress ; of a progress, by which mineral substances are subjected to the same series of changes, and alternately wasted away and renovated. In the same manner as the present mineral substances derive their origin from substance similar

Franklin was not so great a schemer,
Volney a much less windy dreamer.”

to themselves; so from the land now going to decay, the sand and gravel forming on the sea shore, or in the beds of rivers; from the shells and corals which in such enormous quantities are every day accumulated in the bosom of the sea; from the drift wood, and the multitude of vegetable and animal remains continually deposited in the ocean; from all these we cannot doubt, that strata are now forming in those regions, to which nature seems to have confined the powers of mineral reproduction; from which, after being consolidated, they are again destined to emerge, and to exhibit a series of changes similar to the past." Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, p. 118 -19.

Here you have the how: as to the when, Mr. Playfair tells you that "TIME performs the office of integrating the infinitesimal parts of which this progression is made up; it collects them into one sum, and produces from them an amount greater than any that can be assigned."

We have kept the reckoning for "TIME," and have made an infinite number of "infinitesimals," which altogether amount to an aproximation of the precise period of the integration.

92 Volney a much less windy dreamer.

The author of the Pursuits of Literature says that he could

"give with Darwin, to the hectick kind Receipts in verse to shift the north-east wind;"

and that a man, to be qualified for speculations of this sort,

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