[167:A] See the Hist. of the Acad. Ann. 1725.
[170:A] See the collection of Northern Voyages, page 200.
[173:A] Vide Pliny, Hist. Nat. Vol. I. lib. 2.
[175:A] See the ancient relations of travels by land to China, page 53 and 54.
[177:A] Since this time, however, great discoveries, have been made; Mons. Vaillant has given a particular description of the country from the Cape to the borders of Caffraria; and much information has also been acquired by the Society for Asiatic Researches.
[178:A] See the Hist. of New France, by the Pere Charlevoix. Vol. III. page 30 and 31.
ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE STRATA, OR BEDS OF EARTH.
We have shewn, in the first article, that by virtue of the mutual attraction between the parts of matter, and of the centrifugal force, which results from its diurnal rotation, the earth has necessarily taken the form of a spheroid, the diameters of which differ about a 230th part, and that it could only proceed from the changes on the surface, caused by the motion of the air and water, that this difference could become greater, as is pretended to be the case from the measures taken under the equator, and within the polar circle. This figure of the earth, which so well agrees with hydrostatical laws, and with our theory, supposes the globe to have been in a state of liquefaction when it assumed its form, and we have proved that the motions of projection and rotation were imprinted at the same time by a like impulsion. We shall the more easily believe that the earth has been in a state of liquefaction produced by fire, when we consider the nature of the matters which the globe incloses, the greatest part of which are vitrified or vitrifiable; especially when we reflect on the impossibility there is that the earth should ever have been in a state of fluidity, produced by the waters; since there is infinitely more earth than water, and that water has not the power of dissolving stone, sand, and other matters of which the earth is composed.
It is plain then that the earth took its figure at the time when it was liquefied by fire: by pursuing our hypothesis it appears, that when the sun quitted it, the earth had no other form than that of a torrent of melted and inflamed vapour matter; that this torrent collected itself by the mutual attraction of its parts, and became a globe, to which the rotative motion gave the figure of a spheroid; and when the earth was cooled, the vapours, which were first extended like the tails of comets, by degrees condensed and fell upon the surface, depositing, at the same time, a slimy substance mixed with sulphurous and saline matters, a part of which, by the motion of the waters, was swept into the perpendicular cracks, where it produced metals, while the rest remained on the surface, and produced that reddish earth which forms the first strata; and which, according to different places, is more or less blended with animal and vegetable particles, so reduced that the organization is no longer perceptible.