Note 80 — IDEAS FOR A PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.

p. 218—“The indurating and heat-emitting mass of the earth.”

If according to the hypothesis of the Neptunists (now long since obsolete), the so-called primitive rocks were also precipitated from a fluid, the transition of the earth’s crust from a condition of fluidity to one of solidity, must have been followed by the liberation of an enormous quantity of caloric, which would have given rise to new evaporation and new precipitations. The more recent these precipitations, the 267more rapid, the more tumultuous, and the more uncrystalline would they have been. Such a sudden liberation of caloric from the indurating crust of the earth, independent of the latitude, and the position of the earth’s axis, might indeed occasion local elevations of temperature in the atmosphere, which would influence the distribution of plants. The same cause might also occasion a kind of porosity which seems to be indicated by many enigmatical geological phenomena in floetz rocks. I have developed my conjectures on this subject in detail in a small memoir on primitive porosity.^[LX] According to the views I have more recently adopted, it appears to me that the variously shattered and fissured earth, with its fused interior, may long have continued in the primeval period, to impart to its oxidised surface a high degree of temperature, independent of its position with respect to the sun and to latitude. What an influence would not, for instance, be exercised for ages to come on the climate of Germany by an open fissure a thousand fathoms in depth, extending from the Adriatic Gulf to the northern coast? Although in the present condition of the earth, long-continued radiation has almost entirely restored the stable equilibrium of temperature first calculated by Fourier in his Théorie analytique de la Chaleur, and the outer atmosphere is now only brought into direct communication with the molten interior of the earth, by means of the insignificant openings of a few volcanoes; yet in the primitive condition of our planet, this interior emitted hot streams of air into the atmosphere through the various clefts and fissures formed by the frequently recurring foldings (or corrugations) of the mountain strata. This emission was wholly independent of latitude. Every newly formed planet must thus in its earliest condition have regulated its own temperature, which was, however, subsequently changed and determined by its position in relation to the central body, the sun. The moon’s surface also exhibits traces of this reaction of the interior upon the crust.