Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: same paternal Hand which originally called their powers into action. FIRST WEEK?TUESDAY. ON THE INTERNAL HEAT OF THE EARTH. Besides the phenomena already alluded to, relative to heat, there is another of very extensive operation, which, although it cannot be considered as entering immediately, in any perceptible degree, into the formation of climate, is yet too remarkable to be passed over without some notice. I allude to the existence of that heat in the interior of our globe, which cannot be referred to external causes, and which has produced, and is continually producing, great and important changes on its surface.f Indications of the action of a powerful heat in the inner strata of the earth, meet the geologist at every step of his investigation, and it is only by this agency that he is able to account for various existing phenomena at or near the surface, from which, instead of stopping to enumerate them all, I shall select a few of the most striking instances. For several of the facts stated in this paper, I am indebted to a valued friend. t The evidence in proof of great and frequent movements of the land itself, both by protrusion and subsidence, and of the connexion of these movements with the operations of volcanoes, is so various and so strong, derived from so many quarters on the surface of the globe, and every day so much extended by recent inquiry, as almost to demonstrate that these have been the causes by which those great revolutions were effected; and that, although the action of the inward forces which protrude the land has varied greatly in different countries, and at different periods, they are now, and ever have been, incessantly at work in operating present changes, and preparing the way for future alteration in the exterior of the glob...