do great honour to his nation. The learned of other nations paffed it over as the licensed flight of a great genius. Having gained very deserved reputation by the accuracy of his descriptions of the forms, and his fagacious difquifitions on the nature and manners of that multiplicity of quadrupeds, birds, and fishes he had treated; he, after more than twenty years interval, again came forward, no longer to give a bold conjecture on the formation and theory of the univerfe, but, with pretended proofs in hand, to evince not only the poffibility, but on moft points the neceffary truth, of his former affertions. This was no longer in the style of a man who offers his ideas and conjectures to the world, but in the magifterial and dictatorial tone of one who is perfectly fure of whatever he advances. Already highly prejudiced in his favour, his countrymen very generally received his dictates with implicit faith; and many learned men of other nations, who had imbibed the unbelieving principles of French philofophy, adopted great part of his fyftem, as fully fufficient to overturn at least all prejudices grounded on the Mofaical and fcriptural account of the creation and of time. I must first lay before you, Sir, a fummary view of the fyftem itself, before I offer thofe objections to it which to me seem unanfwerable. I have to combat, with unequal arms, a genius of high reputation and of superior eloquence to neither of these can I pretend; but I trust to the naked force of fair reasoning. In this celebrated system fire is the principal, or rather sole agent. In our planetary world it is in the fun that it effentially exists. That The nal nal motion, of the fire and brightness of the fun, was then increased by the additional preffure of these new-formed planets, acting upon it as the spokes of a wheel upon the axle-tree. The whole matter of all these projected planets was compofed of liquid glass, furrounded by an atmosphere of watery vapours, such as ftill encompasses their parent fun. Not having the fame preffure, they preserved not, at the distance they were thrown, their original internal motion and heat; but gradually cooled, and became confolidated in proportion to their denfities and diameters. Their furfaces were first cooled, and their whole maffes progreffively towards the centre, till at last they fhall lofe all heat, and become dead, and incapable of fuftaining vegetable or animal life. From the analogy of the time required to cool a redhot cannon ball, our author has ventured to fix the times in which each planet ceafed to be red-hot on its furface, and thofe in which they will finally lofe their central heat. The duration of incandefcence, or of their retaining a red-hot surface, lafted till each planet became confolidated to its centre; and is thus determined: 2936 years for the Earth, 644 for the Moon, 2127 for Mercury, 1130 for Mars, 3596 for Venus, 5140 for Saturn, and 9433 years for Jupiter. By the fame rule, the time of each becoming habitable, and that of each finally lofing all heat, are fixed. The Moon has long become frigid, and Jupiter is not yet fufficiently cooled to bear animal life. The Moon, the fatellites of Jupiter and Saturn, formed from the less Their denfe particles of planets, were projected from their equators in the time of their ebullition by the centrifugal force of thefe planets, proportional proportional to the velocity of their feveral rotations. For want of this velocity Mars has no fatellite, Mercury probably has none, but Venus might have one imperceptible to us, though fuch projection may have been prevented by the extreme denfity and adherence of its substance. In his epochs of Nature Mr. de Buffon modeftly declines abfolutely determining that the formation of the planets was neceffarily owing to the action of this comet skimming and carrying off with it part of the furface of the fun. But he afferts that it is both poffible and probable that this was the cafe; and maintains, as a very probable hypothefis, that a comet, which in its perihelium fhould approach near enough to the fun to raise and plough its furface, might produce fuch effects; and that it is far from impoffible that fome day new planets fhould be formed in this fame manner; all of which would circulate, like the present planets, in the fame direction, and nearly in the fame plane round the fun. Such planets would turn upon their own axes, and their fubftance emerging from the fun in a state of liquefaction would obey the fame centrifugal force, would be in like manner elevated towards the equator, and depreffed towards the poles; they might also have their fatellites, become gradually cool, and finally peopled in the fame manner as the prefent planets. Thus we fee, without any, or at least any new interference of the Godhead, a new fund prepared for the formation of new worlds, and new inhabitants, to all eternity. But to return: He conjectures that this and all other comets of our planetary fyftem, whether equally beneficently active or inactive, were originally formed by the explosion of a fixed ftar, the nearest to our fun, whofe parts, thus difperfed, having no longer any common centre, were forced to obey the attractive force of our fun, who from that instant became the focus and pivot of all our comets. Though he does not affert the agency of this creative comet abfolutely certain, yet he maintains positively, that all our planets are composed of the fame materials as the fun, and are, probably, by fome such accident, detached portions of that body. All our planets, though of different denfities, are entirely composed of melted glass, and confequently all earthly matter, without exception, is vitreous. This truly hermaphroditical glass is at the fame time the feed and matrix of all that exifts upon the planets, of all poffible beings, animated or inanimate. It seems early to have produced air and water, by fublimation, as it had produced fire by friction; and those elements accompanied our planets as minor captives robbed from the fun's atmosphere. Whilft our planet continued in the ftate of incandefcence, these were kept aloof for the space of 2936 years: but when this interior heat was diminished, and our globe became confolidated to the centre; these elements, which cannot support a temperature so hot as was till then the furface of the earth, began to make fuccessful inroads on its cooling furface. They fell upon it, but were often yet repelled. At laft the waters 'fixed upon the coolest parts of it, towards the poles; and this might happen about 25,000 years after its first formation. During this first epoch of Nature, matter became more and more fixed and compreffed, so as to form |