—that the air and ocean must pass away, that all the living creatures
of the earth must perish, and the desolation shall come about in this
wise.
At present, the interior of our planet is described as a molten fluid,
with a solid crust outside. As the world cools down with age, this
crust will thicken and crack, and crack again, as the lower part
contracts. This will form _rainures_, _i.e._, long narrow chasms, of
vast depth, which, like those on the moon, will traverse, without
deviation, the mountains, valleys, plains, and ocean-beds; the waters
will fall into these, and, after violent catastrophes, arising from
their boiling by contact with the hot interior, they will finally
disappear from the surface, and become absorbed in the pores of the
vastly-thickened earth-crust, and in the caverns, cracks, and chasms
which the rending contraction will open in the interior. These cavities
will continue to increase, will become of huge magnitude when the
outside crust grows thick enough to form its own supporting arch, for
then the fused interior will recede, and form mighty vaults that will
engulf not the waters merely, but all the atmosphere likewise.
At this stage the earth, according to M. St. Meunier, will be
a middle-aged world like the moon; but as old age advances the
contraction of the fluid, or viscous interior beneath the outside
solid crust will continue, and the _rainures_ will extend in length
and depth and width, as he maintains they are now growing in the moon.
This, he says, must continue till the centre solidifies, and then these
cracks will reach that centre, and the world will be split through in
fragments corresponding to the different _rainures_.
Thus we shall have a planet composed of several solid fragments held
together only by their mutual attractions, but the rotary movement
of these will, according to the French philosopher, become unequal,
as “the fragments present different densities, and are situated at
unequal distances from the centre; some will be accelerated, others
retarded; they will rub against each other, and grind away those
portions which have the weakest cohesion.” The fragments thus worn off
will, “at the end of sufficient time, girdle with a complete ring the
central star.” At this stage the fragments become real meteors, and
then perform all the meteoric functions excepting the seed-carrying of
Sir W. Thomson.
It would be an easy task to demolish these speculations, though not
within the space of one of my letters. A glance at the date of this
paper, and the state of Paris and the French mind at the time, may,
to some extent, explain the melancholy relish with which the Parisian
philosopher works out his doleful speculations. Had the French army
marched vigorously to Berlin, I doubt whether this paper would ever
have found its way into the “Comptes Rendus.” After the fall of Paris,
and the wholesale capitulation of the French armies, it was but natural
that a patriotic Frenchman, howsoever strong his philosophy, should
speculate on the collapse of all the stars, and the general winding-up
of the universe.