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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #68690 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68690)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Vailan or annular theory, by
-Stephen Bowers
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Vailan or annular theory
- A synopsis of Prof. I. N. Vail's argument in support of the claim
- that this Earth once possessed a Saturn-like system of rings
-
-Author: Stephen Bowers
-
-Release Date: August 5, 2022 [eBook #68690]
-
-Produced by: Sonya Schermann, Thomas Frost and the Online Distributed
- Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
- produced from images generously made available by The
- Internet Archive).
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VAILAN OR ANNULAR
-THEORY ***
-
-
-
-
-
- THE VAILAN OR ANNULAR THEORY.
-
- [Illustration]
-
-_A Synopsis of Prof. I. N. Vail’s Argument in Support of the Claim that
- this Earth once Possessed a Saturn-like System of Rings._
-
- PREPARED BY
-
- STEPHEN BOWERS, A. M., Ph. D.
-
- Editor of the Ventura Observer.
-
- FELLOW OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF
- THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, PHILADELPHIA ACADEMY
- OF SCIENCES, ETC., ETC., ETC.
-
- [Illustration]
-
- VENTURA, CALIFORNIA:
- THE OBSERVER PRESS PRINT.
- 1892.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-The theory advanced by Prof. I. N. Vail accounts for the formation
-of the earth’s crust, with its associated minerals, in the fact that
-it was once surrounded by rings of aqueous vapor, containing much of
-its present solid matter, which fell as mighty deluges. The last of
-these rings descended at the time of the Noachian deluge and caused
-that catastrophe, which is so graphically described by Moses, and
-which tradition has sung in the ears of every tribe of Adam’s race.
-The formation of these rings was caused by the intense heat, which
-drove to an immense distance every substance which could be reduced to
-vapor, and where they formed as annular bands or rings similar to those
-surrounding the planet Saturn at the present time. After long ages the
-portion nearest the earth slowly overcanopied the heavens, and owing to
-the lack of centrifugal force began its descent at the poles.
-
-This theory explains certain phenomena better than any other yet
-advanced by scientists. It accounts for the uplift of mountains; the
-deposit of coal and other minerals; the glacial age; the retardation
-of the moon, and it alone explains much contained in the first eight
-chapters of Genesis.
-
-Prof. Vail has published a volume of about 400 pages on this subject,
-which for clearness of statement and logical conclusions has seldom
-been equaled by previous writers on scientific subjects. He deals in
-convincing facts which are destined to overturn many pre-conceived
-theories in the science of geology.
-
-My object in sending forth this pamphlet is to call the attention of
-intelligent readers to a theory which must engage the attention of
-scientists in the future, and which will enable the geologist to make
-clear many things which are now obscure. I respectfully ask for the
-following pages a candid reading, and for further information on the
-subject refer the reader to Prof. Vail’s “Story of the Rocks”, and to
-other works of the gifted author, which are now passing through the
-press.
-
- VENTURA, CALIFORNIA, S. B.
- September 1, 1892.
-
-
-
-
-THE VAILAN OR ANNULAR SYSTEM.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION.
-
-
-Jupiter’s belts are doubtless aqueous vapor driven from that planet by
-heat; similar in every respect, probably, to the primitive condition
-of our globe. This vapor would not all fall at once on the cooling of
-the earth, but the upper portion would continue to revolve for a long
-period.
-
-All geologists agree that the earth was once in an igneous fluid state,
-and during that condition all of its waters and whatever else could
-be vaporized and sublimed by heat, as the less refractory metals and
-minerals, were driven away from its surface. The foundation of the
-Annular System was the molten or igneous world. The vaporized water,
-mineral and metallic elements repelled from it existed as a great
-vaporized atmosphere that rotated with the earth.
-
-If the earth then rotated once in twenty-four hours, so did the
-atmosphere. Proctor and some others claim that the earth then rotated
-in three hours; if so, the atmosphere did the same. No matter how
-long or how short the period of the earth’s rotation, the upper
-vapors rotated with it. Then, when and how did these vapors and other
-materials composing the atmosphere return to the earth? Geologists
-generally have claimed that they fell at the close of the igneous
-period; but the Annular Theory claims that they did not, and it
-undertakes to explain the phenomena of the geologic ages and epochs
-upon this claim.
-
-The most eminent scientists agree that the vapors were driven off
-at least 200,000 miles from the earth, and many claim a distance of
-240,000 miles. All of the carbon in the grand casement of aqueous
-rocks, the vast oceans of oxygen now contained in the silicates,
-sulphates, carbonates and oxides of the crust, as well as the nitrogen
-and hydrogen in numerous compounds enormously swelled its volume. But
-the Annular Theory will claim but 100,000 miles as the atmosphere
-and that the earth rotated as now, once in twenty-four hours. At the
-equator it revolves at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour, at which rate
-the periphery of the earth’s primitive atmosphere would revolve more
-than 25,000 miles an hour.
-
-Now it is mathematically certain that a body in our atmosphere
-revolving at the rate of 17,500 miles an hour could not fall to the
-earth’s surface. By Kepler’s “Third Law” we can readily demonstrate not
-only that these vapors were thrown out into a ring system, but how far
-beyond the earth they reached, namely: “The squares of the periodic
-times of revolving satellites are proportioned to the cubes of their
-mean distances from the primary around which they move.”
-
-The vapors nearest the earth did not possess the energy of satellites,
-consequently they fell to the earth, as the latter’s surface cooled,
-leaving the more distant matter moving independently above it.
-
-
-EVIDENCES OF THE GEOLOGIC RECORD.
-
-When the earth was in a state of fiery fluidity, all of the water it
-now contains was suspended at a great distance above it. Beside the
-oceans which now cover three-fourths of the surface of the globe, rocks
-and coals contain from ten per cent to one half water, all of which was
-primarily held in suspension. The bosom of the earth is continually
-absorbing water as is demonstrated by deep mines and other excavations.
-Dana estimates that even if the crust of the earth is but five miles
-thick that the oceans would be 400 feet deeper if all of the earth’s
-imbibed waters could be returned to them. But the earth’s crust is more
-likely to be 100 miles thick, and it has been imbibing these waters
-for millions of years if not millions of ages. This would increase the
-oceans to about 8000 feet deeper than now. Yet oceans are much deeper
-today than they were in geologic times.
-
-This great mass of vapor would rotate by centrifugal force at the
-equator, but there being no such force at the poles it was there kept
-from falling by heat alone. If the earth had not rotated the vapors
-would have occupied great heights; but centrifugal force being aided by
-actual rotation they were driven much farther. These forces necessarily
-drove the vapors over the equator. If, however, any vapors were left at
-the poles they must have fallen when the earth cooled down.
-
-At that age rolled the first born ocean around the globe. Clouds
-formed, rain descended, and winds swept the earth. There was summer and
-winter, and day and night.
-
-The centripetal force of the rings was gradually retarded by the
-influence of the moon, and the gravital force was increased until the
-rings spread over the earth or approached it. When the innermost ring
-gradually descended toward the earth and came in contact with the air
-it was checked, and necessarily spread out toward the poles. Gravital
-force is strongest in the polar regions. If the rings of Saturn and
-Jupiter could increase their motion they would rise to greater heights.
-If they could become slower they would sink toward the poles.
-
-
-EVIDENCE FROM OTHER PLANETS.
-
-We have never seen the actual face of Saturn, and the sun is never
-visible to its inhabitants. It is a planet upon which there is probably
-perpetual day. The belts are composed of the same kind of material as
-the super-crust of the earth--silicious, calcareous and carbonaceous
-matter. They will in time become a part of the planet’s sedimentary
-formation.
-
-When the inveterate fires of the sun shall have died out, forms of
-carbon and associated forms of aqueous and mineral matter will form an
-annular system around it.
-
-A burning world must be a smoking world, and from its furnaces must
-arise vast volumes of unconsumed carbon to mingle with suspended vapors.
-
-When Saturn’s rings fall to the body of the planet its moons will
-necessarily retire a little farther from it. Astronomers say that our
-moon is gradually retiring from the earth. Then it must have had an
-annular system which fell and caused the moon to recede.
-
-
-FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE RECORD.
-
-The vapors contained silex, quartz and whatever else was vaporized and
-suspended therein. After the atmosphere had cooled it deposited on the
-earth what it contained when heated. Much of the sedimentary beds built
-upon the Laurentian and older rocks were simply precipitated from the
-annular system.
-
-Iron and sulphur existed in the upper ocean as metallic and mineral
-salts. In the cooling process the heavier minerals and metals would
-necessarily locate nearest the earth and be the first to fall. True
-they were disseminated to a certain extent throughout the system.
-
-Iron and other heavy metals formed beds in the sea bottom. Iron from
-Iron Mountain, Mo., and Pilot Knob, also lead and copper ores are
-in the Laurentian rocks. These rocks are aqueous or sedimentary.
-The annular matter fell but in small part in equatorial regions, but
-largely in temperate and frigid zones.
-
-It is folly to suppose that all the matter of aqueous beds were
-deposited from previous aqueous beds by denudation. How were subsequent
-lime deposits made from silicious Archaean beds? Denudation has
-taken place in all ages, and a fall and precipitation of exotic
-matter--tellurio-cosmic matter--aided in the work.
-
-
-CONCLUSIONS REACHED.
-
-1. All terrestial waters were held in suspension.
-
-2. This rotated as a part and parcel of the earth--a primeval
-atmosphere of great complexity of material.
-
-3. This suspended matter gathered in the earth’s equatorial heavens,
-and on condensing contracted and segregated into rings which revolved
-independently.
-
-4. The waters on high fell in a succession of stupendous cataclysms.
-
-5. The first ocean was impregnated with mineral and metallic salts.
-
-6. It required a vast lapse of time for rings to fall. Each ring
-continued to revolve as a belt about the earth with a decreasing
-velocity as it spread toward the poles and overcanopied the earth.
-
-7. The smoke or unconsumed carbon that arose from the earth, darkened
-the upper vapors and formed bands or belts.
-
-8. The moon retarded the rings, causing them to fall upon the earth,
-and it then receded from our planet.
-
-9. The Archaean metalliferous deposits are so located as to be
-inexplicable by the old theory of aqueous denudation.
-
-10. The Silurian beds, and particularly the order of their occurrence
-utterly refutes the idea that they were derived from pre-existing beds.
-
-
-DEMONSTRATED BY HISTORIC TESTIMONY.
-
-In Gen. 1:7 God made the firmament and divided the waters which were
-under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.
-According to the Hebrew the atmosphere became an expanse between two
-bodies of waters, and of course the upper stratum had to move round the
-earth. In Gen. 1:3,4 light came in and garnished the heavens before
-the sun was seen.
-
-In the 10th. verse the waters on the earth were called seas, the water
-above the earth was called the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon
-them. “And God said, Let there be light,” and light came upon the deep.
-
-In Gen 1:14-19 the sun which existed for ages did not appear in the
-heavens until after the sun brought forth grass, etc. Then it is plain
-that some intercepting canopy cut off the direct rays of the sun.
-
-The writer of Genesis did not say the sun and moon shone upon the
-earth, but he does say the stars did this. According to the Vailan
-theory this is true, but they shone in from polar regions.
-
-The earth’s surface was not heated by the sun’s direct rays, but under
-the overcanopying vapors it must have been warmed, and its temperature
-equalized by transmitted and diffused solar heat.
-
-
-CONCLUSIONS.
-
-There was a green-house temperature all over the earth at this time.
-Storms and tempests were unknown, as such phenomena are caused by
-sun-power, sun-heat falling directly upon the earth. Rains were
-infrequent, if at all.
-
-Man, in the day when solar actinism was shorn of its strength, must
-have experienced remarkable longevity, for upon solar energy depends
-every form and phaze of life on earth.
-
-The day of rest referred to in Gen. 2:3 in which God ceased from
-his labors was a windless, stormless, rainless, winterless age; for
-immediately we are told that “God had not caused it to rain upon the
-earth.” The climate was warm for man dwelt naked upon the earth. He was
-nurtured in a green-house world.
-
-The rainbow comes into view after the deluge for the first time. There
-could have been neither rain nor sunshine previously, just what the
-Vailan theory claims. The wind came upon the earth after the waters of
-the deluge had fallen, and not before.
-
-It was after the deluge that God said, “While the earth remaineth
-seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter,
-and day and night shall not cease.” The period before the flood was
-nightless, and evening and morning were day; that is, they coalesced
-into one period called day.
-
-After the deluge the bow is given; man’s longevity declines; the winds
-come, and alternating seasons take place--all pointing to the fact that
-the antedeluvian world was overcanopied by annular waters.
-
-Every leaf of the geologic record declares that the world has been
-deluged time and again, which this theory also claims to be true, and
-to have taken place at the declension of each ring or stratum.
-
-
-THE NOACHIAN DELUGE.
-
-There is enough water now on the earth and in its rocky frame to make
-an hundred terrific deluges, every one of which could drown the world
-of living beings.
-
-In early days man believed there was a great deep on high. The sources
-of the deluge were “broken up,” and never again can the world be
-destroyed from that source. If the fountains of the deep were on the
-earth or in the seas then they are not “broken up.” If they were in
-the clouds, they were not, for that source still exists. Then we must
-believe that they came from beyond the clouds.
-
-With the fountain of the great deep placed on high--the veritable
-waters above the firmament--we can readily understand why the “windows
-of heaven were opened,” and why “all the fountains of the great deep
-were broken up.” The rainbow proclaims these facts around the circuit
-of the earth.
-
-How does it happen that the author of Genesis relates these facts
-with such harmonious accord, with all the conditions which an Annular
-arrangement of water necessitated, if the idea was not familiar to his
-mind?
-
-The presence of upper vapors entering the atmosphere on their way to
-the earth by the way of the polar regions necessitated an atmosphere of
-greater buoyancy and power, and this necessitated greater bodily frame.
-Hence it is said: “There were giants in those days.” There were giants
-among animals as well as men.
-
-
-LEGENDS OF THE DELUGE.
-
-Such wide-spread desolation as is accredited to the deluge of Noah
-must have made an indelible impression upon the human mind. We would
-naturally look for references to it in Aryan, Phoenecian, Greek and
-Hebrew history. They were the guardians of civilization. It is not
-difficult to co-link even the rudest form of the flood traditions with
-the terrible visitation so graphically related by Moses. Its shadow
-will never pass from the historic page.
-
-Men may criticise and ridicule the narrative given by Moses, yet the
-fact remains that a self-sustaining history is there; and the combined
-sophistry of all time cannot shake it.
-
-An account of that great catastrophe is found in the mythological
-narratives and traditional history of nearly or quite every people and
-tribe of Adam’s race.
-
-It is found among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Scythians and
-Celtic tribes. It has been discovered among the Peruvians and Mexicans;
-the aborigines of Cuba, of North America and the South Sea Islands.
-Even the inhabitants of Alaska preserve a tradition of the deluge; and
-all point unmistakably to the deluge of Noah.
-
-Recent investigations in the ruins of Nineveh, Babylon and in ancient
-cities of Egypt confirm it by tablets preserved as veritable books.
-
-Tradition as she sits amidst the crumbling ages of the past sings it in
-our ears, while the sound of a universal deluge has gone out through
-all the earth. It would require volumes to present these traditions
-alone.
-
-
-AUGMENTATION OF OCEANIC WATERS.
-
-Some portions of the earth are sinking while others are rising. The
-millions of cubic feet of matter deposited daily in the oceans by
-rivers would be sufficient to accomplish this. Every pound of matter
-thus transferred, _is an energy transferred_. In the course of 1,000
-years, 1,000 square miles of oceanic bottom would be covered to the
-depth of 240 feet.
-
-This enormous pressure on the underlying rocks is so much transferred
-energy converted into mechanical heat. This must expand the rocks thus
-under increased pressure. If this sediment were not borne into the
-ocean along the Atlantic coast and spread out over vast areas it would
-be lined with mountains and volcanoes, as that of the Mediterranean
-sea; but being spread out over an extensive floor it prevents their
-formation by lateral pressure.
-
-Volcanoes are located where sediments can accumulate, and are doubtless
-the result of this accumulation. Sixty-five thousand feet of steel
-blocks piled one upon another would cause sufficient heat to melt the
-lower ones or reduce them to a plastic state. The lava that issues from
-a volcano is the deep bed-rock fused by pressure produced by lateral
-expansion. Accumulating sediments cause rock expansion in some regions,
-and being removed from others, causes contraction. Expansion elevates
-the earth’s crust; contraction lowers it.
-
-A downfall of water that would raise the ocean fifty feet above its
-present level would cause an expansion that no rocks could resist, and
-its lateral pressure must result in mountain making. The New England
-coast has been elevated in comparatively recent times. The St. Lawrence
-is so new that it has not yet swept its channel clean.
-
-From Nova Scotia to Florida and around the whole boundary of the Gulf
-of Mexico are the submerged shore-lines of a former continent. Many
-miles out the lead-line suddenly plunges from about 100 fathoms to from
-200 to 1,500 fathoms. So around the British Isles, the coast of Norway,
-and that of Northern Europe and Asia. South America, Africa and the
-Pacific present the same characteristics. The course of a submerged
-continent has been traced in mid-ocean.
-
-
-SUMMARY.
-
-The Vailan Theory is proved,
-
-1. By mathematical reasoning and philosophic necessity.
-
-2. By the mineral character and philosophical deposition of strata.
-
-3. By analagous facts relating to other worlds, belted and ringed under
-the reign of law.
-
-4. By the action of the moon.
-
-5. By the records of man whose ancient writings declare, and
-re-declare, again and again, the truth of this claim. The first eight
-chapters of Genesis alone afford proof sufficient if all else failed.
-
-6. The waters on the earth themselves declare the fact.
-
-
-GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES.
-
-The first and most important element of the earth’s crust is carbon. Of
-the more than 60,000 feet of aqueous beds there are probably none that
-it does not enter into as an important factor. It was first driven
-from the earth by intense heat. The burning world was a smoking world.
-The unconsumed carbon commingled with the Annular vapors in the form
-of black, sooty, pitchy matter. This was deposited at the time of the
-deluge, and the waters that stood in seas, lakes and ponds deposited
-it as a layer of black, carbonaceous mud upon their bottoms. It may
-be found in ten thousand lakes planted in the Drift deposits in North
-America and Northern Europe.
-
-A black carbonaceous soil covers many Western States which were once
-covered by a vast inland sea. This sea was bounded on the west by the
-Rocky Mountains; south by the Ozark Mountains and the mountains of
-Tennessee and Kentucky, and emptied its waters into Lake Michigan.
-
-This great inland sea finally became a fresh-water body. The remains
-of the mastodon, mammoth and other pachyderms of interdiluvian times,
-as well as fresh-water shells are found. It made for itself two great
-outlets, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence rivers. This inland
-sea must have been elevated 700 or 800 feet above the ocean, and was
-surrounded on all sides by walls, and covered an area of at least
-500,000 square miles. We must conclude that some great down-rush of
-waters caused it to break its bounds in two directions at the same time.
-
-The fall of waters supplied the black, sooty carbon that settled to
-the bottom of the sea, remaining but a few inches thick on the hills,
-perhaps, but several feet in the valleys, and is the source of the peat
-bogs.
-
-
-GLACIAL EPOCHS.
-
-Previous to the glacial record there had closed a long period of
-perpetual spring. The primitive elephant, and many of his congeners and
-contemporaries, fed in luxurious forests and grassy plains toward the
-north pole, which are now covered with glaciers grinding their bones
-to dust. Northern regions which for untold ages had been covered with
-tropical vegetation, and animals of innumerable forms, began to be
-invaded by glaciers which slowly made their way toward the equator.
-
-The only way glaciers are now formed is by vapors wafted over them
-from adjacent lands warmed by solar heat; but they were not formed
-that way during the glacial epochs, but by the declension of annular
-vapors. Glacial ice cannot accumulate extensively now. _It flows_, and
-cannot be heaped up largely, its rate of motion being proportionate to
-the slope of its bed. The source of those snows which built a great
-continental ice cap over the northern hemisphere must be attributed to
-the Annular System. They accumulated in the St. Lawrence valley several
-thousand feet thick and towered over the New England mountains.
-
-Snow seldom falls in arctic regions now. Dr. Kane saw sledge tracks
-that were made several years previously. How then did those boundless
-reaches of snow and ice accumulate but by the descent of Annular vapors?
-
-Animals are found entombed in the frozen soil and snows under the
-arctic circle. For many years a large trade has been carried on in
-ivory, by Siberian traders, dug from the frozen soil. Many of the
-animals, as the mammoth, rhinoceros, etc., remain undecayed, and in
-their stomachs and between their teeth are found the vegetation upon
-which they fed. And even the capillary blood vessels still retaining
-their contents, showing that there was not the slightest decomposition,
-but that the catastrophe which overwhelmed them was sudden. The climate
-was changed as by a stroke, which congealed and sealed the land in ice,
-locking the mammoth and other animals therein.
-
-Had those animals not been frozen soon as killed, putrification and
-decomposition must have taken place. Nothing but the down-rush of snows
-from the earth’s Annular System could have done this. These remains are
-dredged from the northern oceans, and they are also found fossilized
-over large portions of Siberia; in both cases being doubtless dropped
-from icebergs. The mammoth is found frozen in a glacier; the glacier
-was originally snow; the destruction must necessarily have been sudden.
-
-If not more than one tenth of the waters now upon the earth had fallen
-in the form of snow it would have covered the entire land surface
-of the globe more than 30,000 feet deep; and as one tenth must have
-fallen in polar regions it brings out the Annular Theory as a competent
-source. The sudden fall of snow sufficient to overwhelm a semi-tropical
-world could not accumulate in the atmosphere as it now does, and fall
-therefrom. It must have come from a source beyond the atmosphere.
-
-The overcanopying fund of vapors acted as a mighty robe to the earth,
-keeping out the cold of space, and equally distributing solar heat
-over the globe and causing terrestial warmth. The animals were much
-larger than their representatives are now, showing that the atmosphere
-was heavier and possessed more buoyant power by the pressure of a vast
-ocean of vapors in the higher regions.
-
-The downfall of water caused continual upheavals, and mountain making,
-which is proved by finding marine fossils along the seashore, and
-elsewhere far above the ocean. Terraces of the Champlain epoch in New
-England that must have been formed in the sea, are now found elevated
-hundreds of feet.
-
-All geologists agree that there have been many floods upon the earth.
-The great telluric glaciers of recent geologic times were melted under
-the tropic influence of the Annular vapors resulting in deluges.
-
-Under the vast pressure of the accumulated waters the plastic ocean
-bed goes down and forces its foundation under the continent by lateral
-pressure, and causes upturned and crumpled strata in many places, and
-also volcanic phenomena.
-
-
-REVIEW OF THE GEOLOGIC RECORD.
-
-The geologist has never yet found the base of the aqueous rocks, nor
-can he know how deep their foundations extend. When the Laurentian
-stratified beds were formed there was an ocean on the earth. A portion
-of the tellurio-cosmic waters had fallen.
-
-In the bowlder and conglomerate rocks found in every age of geology
-there is proof that glaciers invaded the earth after the declension of
-each Annular stratum. The Annular matter extended in comparatively
-narrow belts over the equator. As the lower stratum was attracted
-toward the earth it gradually spread out toward the polar regions,
-causing a warm climate all over the earth, and melting the snows and
-glaciers at the poles. This lasted untold ages until a tropic and
-semi-tropical vegetation spread over the earth. After its fall arctic
-cold invaded the north and south poles, pushing a vast ice cap toward
-the equator, which remained until another stratum of annular vapors
-spread over the globe. These ages of warmth and ages of cold continued
-to alternate until the fall of the last ring of vapors, which took
-place at the time of the Noachian deluge, causing that catastrophe.
-
-The sudden destruction of life, at the end of each age in geology, must
-have been caused by sudden cold. The waters reaching the earth at the
-poles must cause refrigeration; must cause excessive floods; must cause
-extermination of specific forms of life; must cause new distribution
-and condition of oceanic waters, and caused great folding and crumpling
-of strata.
-
-In the dissolving of glaciers a vast pressure was lifted from the
-continents and transferred to the ocean beds, causing them to go down
-and the land to be elevated.
-
-
-SEED BED OF ORGANISMS.
-
-From the days of Homer until the present time we read of dust-storms of
-living organisms falling upon the earth, and colored snow, the coloring
-matter being microscopic forms of life. The dust is doubtless of cosmic
-origin. There must be micro-cosmic clouds moving in interplanetary
-space, which meeting the earth in its path, are precipitated upon its
-surface.
-
-We can scarcely conceive of matter anywhere without associating it with
-living forms. The outermost vapors of the annular system, which fell
-in the time of Noah, remained on high for unknown millions of years,
-receiving constant additions of meteoric and cosmic dust from without.
-As the gaseous envelope that now surrounds our earth contains living
-organisms, we must believe the annular matter did also, and to a much
-greater degree.
-
-If Jupiter’s belted system had long ago descended to the body of that
-planet, so that we could gaze upon the continents and seas as we do
-those of Mars, we would conclude that they swarmed with life. An
-incomplete world must contain incomplete or primordial life-forms;
-forms that in time must develop. In yellow snow, dust showers,
-“blood rains,” etc. we have evidence that organic forms are natural
-accompaniments of the nebulous and elementary forms of matter.
-
-Spider showers are well authenticated. Sometimes the air is filled
-with their gossamer threads upon which they mount to unknown depths of
-space, where they live. If spiders can live in the air, descend to the
-earth and live there for a time, and toads can live for untold ages
-immured in solid rock, they could live in belts of aqueous and mineral
-matter. The manner in which organisms have succeeded each other on the
-earth as revealed by the geologic records demands that the annular
-system was the cradle of infant life, the propagating beds in which
-the life-germs were placed by the great Gardener of Nature.
-
-It is as reasonable to suppose that germs took form in water under the
-creative hand before they fell to the earth as afterward, and when we
-see that each downfall brought new life-forms which exhibit no specific
-or generic relation to previous forms, we are forced to admit that
-either the seed beds of the Annular system provided the undeveloped
-organisms, or there was a special creation at each period.
-
-In the Silurian age there was an ocean containing heavy calcarious
-matter; in the Devonian silicious and silicio-calcarious matter;
-in the Carboniferous carbonaceous matter, and each ocean had its
-characteristic life-forms. But if all the waters fell at one time,
-how is it possible for each age to have had an ocean containing
-characteristic minerals? These characteristic minerals fell with each
-ring, which marked the ages of geology, destroying previous life-forms
-and introducing new ones. Eozoic rocks were laid down 40,000 feet
-thick. Upon these were piled Silurian 65,000 feet thick; on these
-Devonian rocks 15,000 feet, and then comes 17,000 feet of Carboniferous
-rocks, each age having characteristic fossils and mineral deposits. As
-these deposits were laid down by the sea, why do they so widely differ
-in their composition if they all fell at the same time from above! The
-Potsdam sandstone underlies the Silurian rocks. It spread from the
-Canadas to Texas, from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains, and
-probably forms a casement around the globe. It is 8,000 feet thick, and
-shows a mechanical and rapid accumulation, pointing unmistakably to
-the downfall of a silicious ring.
-
-The Annular theory admits of the universal eroding power of rivers and
-waves; the transporting power of currents and strata building from
-detrital matter. But waves can do nothing unless supplied with matter.
-Where did they get the crystalline, granulated and infusorial matter to
-spread over the floor of the Silurian ocean? Great beds of metals have
-been laid down as regularity stratified deposits which could not have
-been borne from Archaean terranes.
-
-
-CARBON STRATA DEPOSITED AS AN AQUEOUS SEDIMENT.
-
-Carbon composing a peat bed is simply unconsumed carbon. The carbon
-or smoke that arises from every chimney and furnace when measurably
-shut up from immediate union with oxygen, remains an unburnt fuel
-precisely the same in kind as the unburnt carbon fuel of the peat bogs.
-Were we to collect the unburnt carbon from our chimneys in piles,
-where moisture and air could have free access, it would take fire
-spontaneously and burn, just as peat dug from the bog sometimes takes
-fire and burns.
-
-The millions of fires from foundries, volcanoes, etc., are forming fuel
-wherever soot is formed, and were it not for the ever active oxygen
-of the air, it would all descend upon the earth as fuel and become
-incorporated in forming sedimentary beds. This is our claim for the
-coal, which as unconsumed carbon arose beyond the reach of destroying
-oxygen, from the heated, glowing furnace of our globe, and in time
-returned to the earth.
-
-When the plant dies and begins to decay one of its constituent
-elements, carbon, oxydizes by slow combustion and returns to the air as
-an invisible gas. It is but accidental when a particle fails to become
-oxydized and remains as unconsumed carbon. An exceedingly small part of
-vegetation remains unburnt.
-
-Coal veins, which are from one foot to three hundred feet thick, would
-make a stratum around the earth ten feet thick. Fifty pounds of coal
-will yield 10,000 gallons of carbonic acid. Then calling eight gallons
-equal to one cubic foot the astonishing fact comes out that the coal
-beds actually draw from the atmosphere an ocean of carbonic acid
-which would have covered the globe to the depth of 12,500 feet, which
-would have destroyed all animal life. Even three or four per cent. of
-carbonic acid in our present atmosphere would be fatal to animal life.
-Hence it is clear that coal cannot be attributed to vegetable origin.
-
-
-CONCLUSIONS REACHED.
-
-The following conclusions are clearly deducible:
-
-1. The Annular system was a region of microscopic life and infusorial
-forms. Coal being deposited by sea-water carried down with it marine
-forms, and others settled upon its surface.
-
-2. The carbon deposits must have borne down a vast amount of marine
-vegetation and buried it upon the sea bottom. In swamp marshes the
-vegetation would have been entirely different.
-
-3. When a carbon fall was borne to the seas and settled where limestone
-strata prevailed it would indicate great distance from the shore, and
-here the roof shales of the coal must be necessarily free from land
-fossils. Coal beds amongst sandstone strata indicate depositions near
-shore, and may contain land fossils.
-
-4. The coal beds must be more heavily developed toward polar regions,
-and most free from impurities.
-
-5. All carbon downfalls must have been attended by great cataclysms of
-snow, or water, or both.
-
-6. A coal vein deposited near a volcano, or mechanical heat arising
-therefrom would be metamorphosed into heavier and harder forms of
-carbon. But as all grades must have existed in the Annular system as
-primitive distillates, all of these forms may be found in lands where
-no strata disturbance has taken place.
-
-7. The heavy carbon, as the anthracite and semi-bituminous particles
-would be borne to the deep seas, while the lighter would float into
-shallow water. Hence a submarine valley might have a deposit of
-anthracite while a neighboring bed on an elevation might be bituminous.
-
-8. In both northern and southern hemispheres the coal must be more
-valuable as we proceed from the equator.
-
-9. There must have been carbon falls in all ages, and the first were
-the purest and the best, while the last to descend must have been the
-lightest and poorest, and must be found near the surface, or are the
-foundations of recent peat bogs.
-
-Peat vegetation, or moss known by the generic name of _Sphagnous_, has
-led many to believe it to be the origin of that product. But these
-_sphagnous_ mosses could never have planted themselves over the medial
-and colder latitudes if the carbon beds necessary to sustain them had
-not previously been planted there. If coal and peat are vegetable
-products they should exist in greater abundance in tropical regions;
-but they are found in limited quantity there.
-
-
-IS COAL A VEGETABLE PRODUCT?
-
-The usually accepted theory concerning the origin of coal is that it
-was formed from an ancient vegetation that grew largely in peat and
-swamp marshes. This theory the Vailan system overthrows.
-
-Every atom of the great mass of carbon now forming the coal deposits
-must have been a distilled product of a primitive igneous process
-before the plant could possibly appropriate it. Every intelligent
-chemist knows that the great telluric gas furnace of primitive times
-was competent to produce all the carbon now found in the crust of the
-earth. Soot, that sometimes takes fire in our chimneys, is deposited
-in infinitesimal smoke particles. Hence, smoke from burning carbon is
-simply a fuel which makes it evident that the smoke which arose from
-the igneous earth was a fuel hydro-carbon. The dark belts of Saturn and
-Jupiter are doubtless strata of carbon revolving about those planets.
-
-If the Vailan theory is true the graphites and heavier forms of carbon
-were the first to fall upon the earth after the igneous period was
-passed, and will be found in its first aqueous beds, and generally
-unassociated with fossil vegetation. This is precisely what we do
-find. Both Dana and Dawson bear testimony to the fact that graphite is
-a very common mineral in the older beds, and that the primitive carbon
-beds are equal in gravity to that of similar areas in the carboniferous
-system.
-
-Why no fossil plants in the earlier coal deposits? Because no plants
-grew at that time. Then we must look for its origin elsewhere than in
-plants. If coal be a vegetable product, so is graphite. To say that
-animal organism aided in the process simply adds to the difficulty,
-since it is carbon that makes the organism and not the organism the
-carbon. But suppose fossil plants were found in graphite, would it be
-any more evidence that they formed it than that they formed clay or
-sandrock in which they are found? The simple fact that organic fossils
-are found in carbon beds changed to carbon affords no evidence that
-these organisms made the beds.
-
-We find vegetable remains in coal seams just as we find them in any
-other rock. A coal plant as a lepidodendron, may begin in the lower
-clay, and pierce through a coal seam into the overhanging shale
-and sandstone. In the first it is a clay fossil, in the second a
-carbonaceous fossil, and in the third a silicious fossil. The fact is
-the trunk of a tree in an upright position in a coal bed, which is
-quite common, proves that the coal formed around it rapidly. It would
-require forty feet of vegetable debris to make five feet of carbon.
-Some coal seams are 300 feet thick, which would require at least 2,400
-feet of vegetable growth in its formation, which is an impossibility.
-As a vegetable product coal would form very slowly, but from the
-Vailan system would require but a few hours, or days at most, to lay it
-down.
-
-Plants found in coal burn with difficulty, which ought not to be
-true if they contained a resinous sap, or bituminous matter. In many
-instances you can find a dozen fossil plants in the overlying clay to
-where you can find one in coal. They are clay fossils because they are
-imbedded in clay, same as fossils in coal are carbon because imbedded
-in carbon.
-
-If coal is compressed peat, as some would have us believe, why do we
-not find fibres running vertically through it? You may examine peat
-after a pressure of twenty tons to the square inch has been exerted,
-and yet the vertical structure of the mass will be apparent. Since we
-find abundance of rootlets running in all directions, vertically as
-well as horizontally in the under clays of coal beds it is evident that
-coal is not a metamorphosed peat.
-
-Imagine an expanse of marshes 100,000 square miles in extent, covered
-with calamites, ferns, sigillaria, lepidodendra remaining motionless
-for countless centuries, and then suddenly sinking beneath the waves
-of the sea in order to receive a sea-formed bed for a covering; and
-in the universal burial to preserve but a few fossils, and they in a
-horizontal position, while in the clays immediately above and below the
-coal beds they are found in profusion; that in due time the vast area
-arose from its baptism, and on the thin layer of clay millions of the
-same plants grew until they formed another bed of coal, when it sinks
-again beneath the waves, and this oscillation continued until it had
-been buried twenty, forty or one hundred times, and you have the old
-theory of how coal was formed.
-
-But if the old theory concerning the formation of coal is correct, how
-did it occur that the earth in rising out of the ocean stopped each
-time in the right place for swamp vegetation to accumulate? According
-to the highest authority coal is not formed from sea-plants, for they
-cannot emit any considerable amount of caloric, but it is the product
-of land plants. Then why do we find coal scattered over a vast area of
-sea bottom?
-
-The structure of continents show that they have remained such from
-their first formation. Some of the geologic formations, as the
-Carboniferous-conglomerates, took place all over the earth at the same
-time. How could this be except it came from the Annular system?
-
-Were we to have a shower of carbon dust it would settle to the bottom
-of the sea all over the irregularities of the same. Then sand beds
-accumulating for ages would settle over it. These would form a greater
-thickness in some places than in others; hence a succeeding fall of
-carbon settling upon the ocean floor would not form a bed exactly
-parallel with the first. This is precisely what we find to be true
-in the carbon deposits. The distance in coal seams may vary from
-twenty feet in one place to forty feet in another place in the same
-neighborhood, which is the result of irregularity in the ocean floor.
-
-Bowlders are found in coal seams which means that coal beds have been
-formed under water; and if a foreign bowlder that the coal seam was
-formed at the bottom of the ocean. Bowlders have been found in the
-middle of coal seams with glacial marks upon them, showing that they
-have been dropped from icebergs into the forming coal beds at the
-bottom of the sea. Foreign water-worn bowlders are frequently found in
-coal beds.
-
-Stratas of coal may be separated by layers of clay not more than half
-an inch in thickness; how could vegetation take root in so thin a layer
-of clay sufficient to form the overlying coal seam of probably several
-feet? Suppose a great carbon fund should float from the Arctic ocean
-into Hudson Bay. It would settle upon an undulating bottom, and if a
-flood of muddy water from the surrounding rivers should empty into the
-bay while the carbon bed was forming, a thin clay bed would be the
-result. This might continue as long as the carbon was brought from the
-Arctic regions.
-
-The floating mass of primitive carbon clouds after they entered the
-atmosphere and floated away for centuries, perhaps, toward the polar
-regions in their efforts to reach the earth, became a tissue of
-evolving vegetable organisms and vegetable forms. Take fresh soot from
-a furnace soon as it is formed, subject it to hot vapors from boiling
-waters and store it away in an open vessel of water, and you will soon
-see vegetable and animal organisms start into being. Then why not find
-organisms in revolving soot clouds in the Annular system?
-
-Marine vegetation exists on the sea bottom, and a carbon sediment
-rapidly accumulating would certainly involve it.
-
-Under almost all the carbon veins lies a deposit of fire clay. Strange
-that adjoining a highly combustible bed, a substance should be
-invariably planted that is so refractory as to be used for crucibles
-in fusing almost every known metal! In this bed lies involved a
-profuse marine vegetation, and the preservation of its delicate
-lineaments proves that it was suddenly involved. It is more generally
-present under coal veins that are more distant from the tropics, and
-_invariably_ in the most distant ones. The fire clay-dust sublimed in
-the great telluric crucible arose to commingle with primitive vapors
-and returned with them. When a carbon fall occurred the clay matter
-being of greater specific gravity was the first to find its way to the
-ocean floor.
-
-This fire clay is found under beds of primitive graphite where
-no vegetation is involved, and therefore cannot be a vegetable
-distillation. It is found where glacial action is unknown, and cannot
-be mud pulverized by moving ice. Every one of the more than seventy
-coal seams of the Nova Scotia regions has its characteristic clay-bed.
-When we see trees standing in and surrounded by this clay we are forced
-to admit a rapid accumulation.
-
-Limestone is a deep sea formation and the Vailan system demands that
-standing trees should not be found in it. Only such limestone formation
-or strata as were deposited as mechanical precipitation could be
-formed in shallow waters, especially in regions beyond the tropics.
-A limestone stratum deposited among shore deposits or continental
-detritus points directly to Annular origin and vegetable fossils will
-occur in the upper clays. Here geologists have an opportunity to prove
-or disprove the Annular problem.
-
-Coal and peat are not found in the tropics where they ought to be found
-if vegetation produced them. And if they could be found there it would
-sweep the Vailan system from its foundations. They are found, however,
-just where this system says they must be found. Why is peat found
-in the ocean, and in the thousands of lakes and ponds where no peat
-vegetation is now growing? Suppose we find a peat bed forty feet thick,
-it must have been at one time a lake with forty feet of water, and how
-did the peat begin to grow? Peat forms slowly and the rains and storms
-would have worked mud, etc., more rapidly into it than the peat would
-have filled it. It would neither have grown from the top nor from the
-bottom. The foundation carbon fell from the Annular fund.
-
-
-METAMORPHISM OF CARBON BEDS.
-
-When bituminous or lignitic coal, or even peat is subjected to a
-sufficient degree of heat it is converted into hard coal and sometimes
-into graphite. From this source some conclude that anthracite and
-all hard coals are metamorphosed beds of soft carbon. But how about
-the vast beds in aqueous crusts hundreds of miles from any igneous
-agencies? All anthracite coal changed from bituminous coal will contain
-a greater per cent. of ash than the coal from which it is derived. If
-it does not it is evidence that it never was bituminous coal.
-
-Let us suppose a heavy fall of Annular carbon in the north Atlantic
-ocean, and that the Appalachian mountains were again under the
-sea. The carbon carried by the ocean currents southward would fall
-to the sea bottom in the more quiet waters. The heavy or anthracite
-dust would reach the bottom in deep waters where the lighter forms
-would not. Before the Appalachian upheaval, the eastern base of the
-system was farther out in the sea, and was in deeper waters than the
-western. The constitution of the coal itself, the condition of the sea
-bottom (sloping from the coast to the deep sea) point harmoniously
-to the annular origin of the carbon beds. The bituminous dust not
-being able to directly settle with the anthracite remained longer in
-suspension which accounts for its greater amount of ash. The farther
-south it floated, the more impure it became. The heaviest beds of
-anthracite will be found in the northern part of the great plateau, and
-principally in British America if the Vailan theory is true.
-
-Fossil plants in coal are generally mineralized charcoal, and are
-difficult of combination. If the bed was composed of vegetable
-production the same difficulty would certainly characterize the mass.
-Hence the plant is simply a foreign body in a bed of mineral carbon.
-Coal seams have become so hard as to be planed off by eroding forces
-directly after being laid down, or before heavy beds had accumulated
-over them. Thus they could not have been formed by vegetable peat.
-
-
-TERTIARY COALS.
-
-Extensive coal beds in Asia are probably Tertiary, while the vast
-carbon beds among the Rocky Mountains, and underlying the vast plain
-to the west of these mountains, were formed in the Tertiary period. The
-Rocky Mountain plateau on which the coal beds are planted existed as a
-sea bottom over which the waters from the Arctic world rolled during
-the Tertiary period. The Rocky Mountain region was then sleeping in the
-sea.
-
-The Tertiary beds reach from Mexico to the Arctic ocean, proving that
-currents ran toward the equator along the valley of the McKenzie,
-bearing into southern waters whatever fell from the upper world. It is
-thus easy to see how the vast expanse of this western world became the
-receptacle of Tertiary carbon. Finding no Tertiary coals on the Eastern
-border of our continent we are led to believe that a narrow continent
-stretched from America to Europe across the present bed of the Atlantic
-and hindered the flow of carbon along the Atlantic seaboard. It is
-now conceded by geologists that such an isthmus of land reached from
-Newfoundland to the shores of Europe during the Tertiary period. This
-being true a vast fund of carbon must lie at the bottom of the North
-Atlantic.
-
-If these later coals had been formed out of vegetation growing in great
-continental swamps, the same opportunity was afforded by the southern
-sea borders for this swamp vegetation. And so from Long Island to the
-Rio Grande. Why then do we not find it if coal is of vegetable origin?
-If the vast fund of the lignitic coals is a vegetable production it
-was present in the Tertiary atmosphere as a deadly poison. But at that
-time both land and sea were full of air-breathing mammals and monsters
-showing conclusively that it was not there in such a condition.
-
-
-DEDUCTIONS.
-
-1. The plant when subjected to a proper mode of distillation is made to
-yield carbon in various allotropic forms. So of any mineral that has
-carbon in its constitution. These forms of carbon were placed in the
-crust of the earth after the primitive fires had died out.
-
-2. All such primitive distillations existed in the atmosphere of the
-incandescent earth.
-
-3. This matter as it declined and mingled with the atmosphere in after
-ages, changed from the ring to the belt form, and overcanopied the
-earth and fell largely in regions outside the tropics.
-
-4. The heavier forms of carbon fell largely in the earlier ages; though
-all sections of the system must have had some of each form.
-
-5. All ages were more or less characterized by carbon falls, and no age
-could be exclusively carboniferous.
-
-6. Carbon falling directly into the ocean would separate into heavier
-and lighter forms and settle accordingly in higher or lower elevations
-of sea bottom, thus explaining why different forms of coal are found in
-the same proximate horizon.
-
-7. The earliest or heavier forms are free from organic remains, and
-must therefore be a primitive distillation. The other carbon beds
-by their associated strata; by their involved vegetation and other
-organisms; by accompanying clay-partings; by involved glacial drift;
-by latitudinal gradation in quantity of ash and specific gravity; by
-characteristic absence from the tropics and the heavy deposits in
-higher latitudes; by synchronous formation in all continents; by their
-evident formation in the very lap and bosom of the glacier and in ice
-and flood; by the fact that they are bituminous, oily hydro-carbons,
-and by a multitude of inconsistencies and impossibilities involved
-in the vegetation theory, have been shown to be actual sedimentary
-deposits, and therefore a primitive product.
-
-Since then there is not a feature connected with the formation of coal
-that is not readily explained by the primitive carbon theory; not
-one that philosophic law does not resolve into harmony with Annular
-declension without even the show of conflict; and since vegetarians
-are forever stumbling upon inexplicable difficulties--bowlders,
-pebbles, undulations, slopes, ripple-marks, clay-partings, cannel-coal
-inseparably joined with bituminous coal, anthracites with less
-amount of ash, marine impurities, carbon planted in Archaean beds,
-air-breathing animals among Tertiary coals, carbon dredged from the
-ocean, dug from the frozen world, and innumerable other objections over
-which they can not climb, the vegetation theory can not be true.
-
-
-ANNULAR DOWNFALL IN THE TERTIARY OCEAN OF THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE.
-
-If the Vailian theory claims are valid the beds in the Rocky Mountain
-Tertiary must present the following features: The Cretaceous period
-having been brought to a close by a down-rush of waters and snows in
-the northern hemisphere, a stream of water pouring southward must to a
-great extent have been a fresh-water current, and those deposits in
-the extreme northern beds of the Rocky Mountain region must be largely
-fresh-water accumulations. Those in the middle of this region must
-be to a less extent fresh-water; perhaps sometimes fresh and again
-marine, owing to changes in currents, etc., and the two be commingled,
-while in the southern part the beds must be almost exclusively marine.
-Fortunately for the Vailian theory these demands are fully met. The
-waters of this vast region communicated with the Arctic ocean, probably
-by way of the present depression in British America, along the valley
-of the McKenzie river, while south it communicated with the Gulf of
-Mexico.
-
-Here was a sea forty times larger than Lake Erie. Where did the water
-come from that made the northern part fresh, the middle part brackish
-and the southern portion marine? The Tertiary of the Pacific Coast is
-marine; so is a larger portion of the Atlantic border. Doubtless Davis
-Strait poured a volume of fresh-water from the polar world into the
-Atlantic, for there is the same commingling of marine and fresh-water
-shells on the northeast coast, while in the northern part they are
-exclusively fresh-water species. Rivers could not have done this, for
-all the rivers from Delaware Bay around the coast of the Gulf of Mexico
-were not sufficient to lay down fresh-water Tertiary. Admit that the
-vast polar ocean of the Tertiary period was a body of fresh-water, and
-all difficulties disappear.
-
-Geologists admit that in the Tertiary period mountains were made
-on every continent, that there was a world-wide disturbance of
-strata, and the most complete extermination of species on record.
-The Cretaceous world was swept by a mighty cataclysmic wave, and its
-animals were buried in the detrital mass swept from the land into
-the seas and formed the lower Eocene beds. Nothing of which we can
-conceive could do this but a downpour of Annular waters. One-third of
-North America, a great part of Northern Europe, nearly all of Siberia,
-much of China, and other parts of Asia were apparently synchronously
-submerged beneath _fresh-water_.
-
-The ocean of fresh-water proves the augmentation of snows from the
-great super-aerial fund. The Cretaceous age closed by excessive and
-unusual refrigeration. The transported blocks of stone found in the
-Upper Cretaceous and Lower Tertiary point to a northern origin. The
-evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of an Annular fall of waters in the
-north polar world at that time.
-
-Existing continents were submerged under Cretaceous waters. The Rocky
-Mountains, Andes, Alps and Himalayas were either unborn or in their
-infant stage. But some mighty barrier was raised that rolled the
-Cretaceous waters southward, and made an isolated fresh-water ocean on
-the north. It was the great Atlantic plateau reaching from Newfoundland
-to Ireland, which is known by actual soundings and other evidence to be
-a submerged table land. It was raised from the deep at this very time
-and stood for uncounted milleniums as dry land.
-
-Suppose an ice cap 5000 feet thick should suddenly cover the Arctic
-world. It would press that part of the globe inward and downward upon
-itself even if the planet were solid to the centre. It would render the
-rocks plastic and they would be pushed under the continents causing the
-crust of the earth to rise into mountains in many places. Just what
-occurred in Cretaceous and Tertiary times.
-
-We can trace the shore-line of an almost limitless fresh-water sea
-around the whole hemisphere in Tertiary times, showing that the Arctic
-ocean was a wide expanse of fresh-waters. This leads to the positive
-and permanent establishment of the Vailian or Annular theory.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX.
-
-
-THE LAST ADVANCE OF GLACIERS.
-
-The last downfall of exterior vapors was at the time of Noah, and
-produced the deluge. These vapors naturally gravitated toward the polar
-regions and falling there as snows would accumulate as glaciers, their
-magnitude and extent corresponding with the amount of falling snows.
-It is evident if there ever was an Eden climate upon the earth its
-destruction was brought about by a change of climate. If the Deluge was
-a collapse of the last remnant of upper waters the latter must have
-begun to fall in polar regions many centuries previous.
-
-The Eden world suffered a change of climate during the Adamic age,
-for the race that dwelt naked in Eden became clothed in the skins of
-animals. If this infant race dwelt naked the climate was warm. If
-afterward it became necessary to be clothed with the skins of animals
-it certainly had become cold. If the cold increased it was probably
-caused by the fall of snow in polar regions. The physical condition
-of the antedeluvians and their environment depended on the conditions
-of the upper vapors. Hence, polar glaciers began to advance in Edenic
-times.
-
-Glaciers advanced slowly, and are still advancing. Eight hundred years
-ago Greenland was not the frigid land it now is. The Icelanders and
-the Northmen sailed through northern seas in the interest of commerce
-where now our hardiest seamen with iron-clad vessels scarcely dare to
-venture. They pushed forward commercial enterprises into lands that are
-now inhospitable and uninhabited.
-
-The present glaciation of polar worlds is but the result of the last
-declension of outward vapors. The great ice caps of polar regions
-are moving toward the equator and are constantly diminishing. It is
-possible that we are approaching a day when the last ice berg will be
-borne toward the tropics, and the last glacier will melt, and a more
-genial climate pervade the greater portion of the earth.
-
-
-LONGEVITY OF THE ANCIENTS.
-
-According to the biblical account people lived to be 800 and 900 years
-old. This was principally because of the modification of solar energy.
-Man’s physical environments impelled long life; and his longevity
-diminished immediately after the upper deep fell and the sun began to
-pour his beams upon the race; his environment evidently changed with
-that event. In a few generations after the flood man died at the age of
-120 or 100 years, and finally at three score and ten.
-
-
-
-
-LETTER FROM PROF. I. N. VAIL.
-
-
-MY DEAR DR. BOWERS: I have read with much interest thy compendium of
-“The Earth’s Annular System,” as published by me in 1886. A synopsis
-of that work can give but a meager idea of the grand conception of the
-annular evolution of the earth. “The Annular Theory” stands on the
-immutable truth that worlds evolve according to invariable law.
-
-This compels us to admit that all worlds are made alike, in the general
-changes they undergo. Just as a bud evolves into a flower of the most
-delicate construction and architectural order, so a world launched
-from the same designing Hand must move in the same line of eternal
-order, and under the law of natural uniformity develop and grow into a
-completed world.
-
-This also leads us to the conclusion that if one world possess at
-any time an annular system, then all worlds must possess a similar
-appendage during some period of their existence. Consequently that
-simple fact that the planet Saturn possesses at this time an annular or
-ring system is proof that the earth once had a similar appendage. For
-we must either admit this truth or we must admit that the planet Saturn
-has not evolved thus far along a line of nature’s uniformity, but is
-today a victim of accidental conditions. This law refuses to admit.
-
-But “The Annular Theory” does not rest on these grounds alone. A
-universe of _invariable order_ pronounces it an immutable truth. The
-judgment of the chemist and philosopher is positive that a rotating
-world cannot pass from the molten state to the present condition of the
-earth without undergoing annular changes.
-
-Since the publication of “The Earth’s Annular System” I have had
-opportunities of examining more minutely the subjects treated of
-therein and have secured the most overwhelming evidence that the theory
-there proposed is in the main correct and will stand the test of all
-time. I have found, outside the realm of physical science, the most
-positive evidence that primitive man actually saw at least two rings
-revolving about the earth, named them and worshiped them as gods. These
-relics I have rescued from the wreck of ages, and _with_ these I will
-prove the fact that this earth once had a complex system of Saturn-like
-rings.
-
-Thus in the end the geologist and astronomer will be compelled to admit
-its truthfulness whether they desire to or not. I have found among the
-ruins of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, India and China annular fossils, the
-identification of which settles at once and forever this great question.
-
-Again, I need not point the geologist to the mysteries of the glacial
-epochs, which grow darker and darker as he looks for a competent cause
-for their production. He must know that the great ocean of vapors that
-hovered for unknown time over the earth in the loftiest heights of
-the atmosphere, such as now are seen on two of our neighbor planets,
-could not have fallen to the earth without covering it in the higher
-latitudes with measureless masses of snow, resulting in excessive
-refrigeration. I need but point him to the fact, proven by the coast
-surveys of the world, that the oceans have encroached upon the land
-to such an extent since the last glacial epoch that they stand now
-fully thirty fathoms deeper than they did in pre-glacial times. I need
-only point him to that grand clock-work of worlds shining from the
-firmament--every scintillating point, every rolling sun, is a witness
-of nature’s eternal order, and proclaims that uniformitarian principle
-of world evolution, by which the philosophic investigator must stand.
-The geologist must build on this rock of _uniformity_ in the evolution
-of worlds. The earth has evolved along _this_ line, and the wreck of
-annular conditions is seen on every page of its rocky volume.
-
-In the year 1875 I published a little volume entitled “The Earth’s
-Aqueous Ring.” In it I stated my convictions, and gave reasons
-therefor, that all the glacial periods the world ever saw were produced
-by supra-aerial vapors descending from an annular system that revolved
-about the earth from the remotest geologic ages to the flood of Noah,
-which was itself produced by the fall of the last remnants of those
-upper waters. These claims I am fully prepared to substantiate,
-whatever opposition may be brought against them.
-
- ISAAC N. VAIL,
- ELSINORE, Cal., July 6, 1892.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Note
-
-
-In this file, text in _italics_ is indicated by underscores. Text in
-SMALL CAPS is all uppercase.
-
-The following changes were made to the text as printed:
-
-Page 3: “rings of agueous vapor” changed to “rings of aqueous vapor”
-
-“decent at the poles” changed to “descent at the poles”
-
-5: “the same No matter” changed to “the same. No matter”
-
-6: “Kelper’s “Third Law”” changed to “Kepler’s “Third Law””
-
-7: “FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE RECORD” changed to “FURTHER EXAMINATION
-OF THE RECORD.”
-
-“silicious Archæan beds” changed to “silicious Archaean beds”
-
-“Archæan metaliferous deposits” changed to “Archaean metalliferous
-deposits”
-
-8: “God made the firmmanent” changed to “God made the firmament”
-
-“under the firmmament” changed to “under the firmament”
-
-“above the firmmament” changed to “above the firmament”
-
-“The earths surface” changed to “The earth’s surface”
-
-“the suns direct rays” changed to “the sun’s direct rays”
-
-“overcanopyed by annular waters” changed to “overcanopied by annular
-waters”
-
-9: “THE NOCHIAN DELUGE” changed to “THE NOACHIAN DELUGE”
-
-“Aryan, Phonecian, Greek” changed to “Aryan, Phoenecian, Greek”
-
-“Greeks, Cythians and Celtic tribes” changed to “Greeks, Scythians and
-Celtic tribes”
-
-“among the Peruvians’ and Mexicans” changed to “among the Peruvians and
-Mexicans”
-
-“the ruins of Ninevah” changed to “the ruins of Nineveh”
-
-11: “fresh water shells are found” changed to “fresh-water shells are
-found”
-
-“decent of Annular vapors” changed to “descent of Annular vapors”
-
-12: “soon as killed purification” changed to “soon as killed,
-putrification”
-
-“the downrush of snows from the earths” changed to “the down-rush of
-snows from the earth’s”
-
-“a semitropical world” changed to “a semi-tropical world”
-
-“over-canopying fund of vapors” changed to “overcanopying fund of
-vapors”
-
-“posessed more bouyant power” changed to “possessed more buoyant power”
-
-“doubtless, dropped from icebergs” changed to “doubtless dropped from
-icebergs”
-
-“upon the earth The great” changed to “upon the earth. The great”
-
-“boulder and conglomerate rocks” changed to “bowlder and conglomerate
-rocks”
-
-13: “the disolving of glaciers” changed to “the dissolving of glaciers”
-
-“decended to the body” changed to “descended to the body”
-
-“primordal life-forms” changed to “primordial life-forms”
-
-“unknow depths of space” changed to “unknown depths of space”
-
-14: “Gardner of Nature” changed to “Gardener of Nature”
-
-“Carboniferous carbonacious matter” changed to “Carboniferous
-carbonaceous matter”
-
-“down fall of a silicious ring” changed to “downfall of a silicious
-ring.”
-
-17: “fibres runnning vertically” changed to “fibres running vertically”
-
-“ferns, sigillaria lepidodendra” changed to “ferns, sigillaria,
-lepidodendra”
-
-18: “seperated by layers of clay” changed to “separated by layers of
-clay”
-
-21: “cannel-coal inseperably joined” changed to “cannel-coal
-inseparably joined”
-
-22: “submerged beneath _fresh water_” changed to “submerged beneath
-_fresh-water_”
-
-“great super-ariel fund” changed to “great super-aerial fund”
-
-“wide expanse of fresh waters” changed to “wide expanse of
-fresh-waters”
-
-“New Foundland to Ireland” changed to “Newfoundland to Ireland”
-
-“isolated fresh water ocean” changed to “isolated fresh-water ocean”
-
-23: “antideluvians and their environment” changed to “antedeluvians
-and their environment”
-
-“inhospital and uninhabited” changed to “inhospitable and
-uninhabited”
-
-“glacitation of polar worlds” changed to “glaciation of polar worlds”
-
-“constantly dimishing” changed to “constantly diminishing”
-
-“upon the race his environment” changed to “upon the race; his
-environment”
-
-24: “natures eternal order” changed to “nature’s eternal order”
-
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Vailan or annular theory, by Stephen Bowers</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Vailan or annular theory</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:1em;'>A synopsis of Prof. I. N. Vail&#039;s argument in support of the claim that this Earth once possessed a Saturn-like system of rings</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Stephen Bowers</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 5, 2022 [eBook #68690]</p>
- <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Sonya Schermann, Thomas Frost and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive).</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VAILAN OR ANNULAR THEORY ***</div>
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
-
-
-
-
-<h1 class="mb1_5">THE VAILAN OR ANNULAR THEORY.</h1>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowe5 p2" id="image_1">
- <img class="w100" src="images/image_1.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="center p105 p2"><span class="italic">A Synopsis of Prof. I. N. Vail’s Argument in Support of the Claim that
-this Earth once Possessed a Saturn-like System of Rings.</span></p>
-
-<p class="center p4 p90">PREPARED BY</p>
-
-<p class="center p150 p2">STEPHEN BOWERS, A. M., Ph. D.</p>
-
-<p class="center">Editor of the Ventura Observer.</p>
-
-<p class="center p2 mb3">FELLOW OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF
-THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, PHILADELPHIA ACADEMY
-OF SCIENCES, ETC., ETC., ETC.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowe5 p4" id="image_1_2">
- <img class="w100" src="images/image_1.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="center p3">VENTURA, CALIFORNIA:<br />
-<b>THE OBSERVER PRESS PRINT.</b><br />
-<span class="p110">1892.</span>
-</p>
-
-<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>The theory advanced by Prof. I. N. Vail accounts for the formation of
-the earth’s crust, with its associated minerals, in the fact that it was once
-surrounded by rings of aqueous vapor, containing much of its present
-solid matter, which fell as mighty deluges. The last of these rings descended
-at the time of the Noachian deluge and caused that catastrophe,
-which is so graphically described by Moses, and which tradition has sung
-in the ears of every tribe of Adam’s race. The formation of these rings
-was caused by the intense heat, which drove to an immense distance every
-substance which could be reduced to vapor, and where they formed as
-annular bands or rings similar to those surrounding the planet Saturn at
-the present time. After long ages the portion nearest the earth slowly
-overcanopied the heavens, and owing to the lack of centrifugal force
-began its descent at the poles.</p>
-
-<p>This theory explains certain phenomena better than any other yet advanced
-by scientists. It accounts for the uplift of mountains; the deposit
-of coal and other minerals; the glacial age; the retardation of the moon,
-and it alone explains much contained in the first eight chapters of Genesis.</p>
-
-<p>Prof. Vail has published a volume of about 400 pages on this subject,
-which for clearness of statement and logical conclusions has seldom been
-equaled by previous writers on scientific subjects. He deals in convincing
-facts which are destined to overturn many pre-conceived theories in the
-science of geology.</p>
-
-<p>My object in sending forth this pamphlet is to call the attention of intelligent
-readers to a theory which must engage the attention of scientists
-in the future, and which will enable the geologist to make clear many
-things which are now obscure. I respectfully ask for the following pages
-a candid reading, and for further information on the subject refer the
-reader to Prof. Vail’s “Story of the Rocks”, and to other works of the
-gifted author, which are now passing through the press.</p>
-
-<p class="fright">S. B.</p>
-<p class="ml5 mb0"><span class="smcap">Ventura, California</span>,</p>
-<p class="p0 ml10">September 1, 1892.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_VAILAN_OR_ANNULAR_SYSTEM">THE VAILAN OR ANNULAR SYSTEM.</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowe7" id="image_2">
- <img class="w100" src="images/image_2.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="IMPORTANCE_OF_THE_QUESTION">IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION.</h3>
-
-
-<p>Jupiter’s belts are doubtless aqueous
-vapor driven from that planet
-by heat; similar in every respect,
-probably, to the primitive condition
-of our globe. This vapor would
-not all fall at once on the cooling of
-the earth, but the upper portion
-would continue to revolve for a long
-period.</p>
-
-<p>All geologists agree that the earth
-was once in an igneous fluid state,
-and during that condition all of its
-waters and whatever else could be
-vaporized and sublimed by heat, as
-the less refractory metals and minerals,
-were driven away from its surface.
-The foundation of the Annular
-System was the molten or igneous
-world. The vaporized water,
-mineral and metallic elements repelled
-from it existed as a great vaporized
-atmosphere that rotated with
-the earth.</p>
-
-<p>If the earth then rotated once in
-twenty-four hours, so did the atmosphere.
-Proctor and some others
-claim that the earth then rotated in
-three hours; if so, the atmosphere
-did the same. No matter how long
-or how short the period of the
-earth’s rotation, the upper vapors rotated
-with it. Then, when and how
-did these vapors and other materials
-composing the atmosphere return to
-the earth? Geologists generally
-have claimed that they fell at the
-close of the igneous period; but the
-Annular Theory claims that they did
-not, and it undertakes to explain the
-phenomena of the geologic ages and
-epochs upon this claim.</p>
-
-<p>The most eminent scientists agree
-that the vapors were driven off at
-least 200,000 miles from the earth,
-and many claim a distance of 240,000
-miles. All of the carbon in the
-grand casement of aqueous rocks,
-the vast oceans of oxygen now contained
-in the silicates, sulphates, carbonates
-and oxides of the crust, as
-well as the nitrogen and hydrogen
-in numerous compounds enormously
-swelled its volume. But the Annular
-Theory will claim but 100,000
-miles as the atmosphere and that the
-earth rotated as now, once in twenty-four
-hours. At the equator it
-revolves at the rate of 1,000 miles
-an hour, at which rate the periphery<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>
-of the earth’s primitive atmosphere
-would revolve more than 25,000
-miles an hour.</p>
-
-<p>Now it is mathematically certain
-that a body in our atmosphere revolving
-at the rate of 17,500 miles
-an hour could not fall to the earth’s
-surface. By Kepler’s “Third Law”
-we can readily demonstrate not only
-that these vapors were thrown out
-into a ring system, but how far beyond
-the earth they reached, namely:
-“The squares of the periodic
-times of revolving satellites are proportioned
-to the cubes of their
-mean distances from the primary
-around which they move.”</p>
-
-<p>The vapors nearest the earth did
-not possess the energy of satellites,
-consequently they fell to the earth,
-as the latter’s surface cooled, leaving
-the more distant matter moving independently
-above it.</p>
-
-
-<h3>EVIDENCES OF THE GEOLOGIC RECORD.</h3>
-
-<p>When the earth was in a state of
-fiery fluidity, all of the water it
-now contains was suspended at a
-great distance above it. Beside the
-oceans which now cover three-fourths
-of the surface of the globe,
-rocks and coals contain from ten
-per cent to one half water, all of
-which was primarily held in suspension.
-The bosom of the earth is
-continually absorbing water as is
-demonstrated by deep mines and
-other excavations. Dana estimates
-that even if the crust of the earth
-is but five miles thick that the
-oceans would be 400 feet deeper if
-all of the earth’s imbibed waters
-could be returned to them. But
-the earth’s crust is more likely to be
-100 miles thick, and it has been imbibing
-these waters for millions of
-years if not millions of ages. This
-would increase the oceans to about
-8000 feet deeper than now. Yet
-oceans are much deeper today than
-they were in geologic times.</p>
-
-<p>This great mass of vapor would
-rotate by centrifugal force at the
-equator, but there being no such
-force at the poles it was there kept
-from falling by heat alone. If
-the earth had not rotated the
-vapors would have occupied great
-heights; but centrifugal force being
-aided by actual rotation they
-were driven much farther. These
-forces necessarily drove the vapors
-over the equator. If, however, any
-vapors were left at the poles they
-must have fallen when the earth
-cooled down.</p>
-
-<p>At that age rolled the first born
-ocean around the globe. Clouds
-formed, rain descended, and winds
-swept the earth. There was summer
-and winter, and day and night.</p>
-
-<p>The centripetal force of the
-rings was gradually retarded by the
-influence of the moon, and the gravital
-force was increased until the
-rings spread over the earth or approached
-it. When the innermost
-ring gradually descended toward
-the earth and came in contact with
-the air it was checked, and necessarily
-spread out toward the poles.
-Gravital force is strongest in the
-polar regions. If the rings of Saturn
-and Jupiter could increase
-their motion they would rise to
-greater heights. If they could become
-slower they would sink toward
-the poles.</p>
-
-
-<h3>EVIDENCE FROM OTHER PLANETS.</h3>
-
-<p>We have never seen the actual
-face of Saturn, and the sun is never
-visible to its inhabitants. It is a
-planet upon which there is probably
-perpetual day. The belts are composed
-of the same kind of material<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
-as the super-crust of the earth—silicious,
-calcareous and carbonaceous
-matter. They will in time
-become a part of the planet’s sedimentary
-formation.</p>
-
-<p>When the inveterate fires of the
-sun shall have died out, forms of
-carbon and associated forms of
-aqueous and mineral matter will
-form an annular system around it.</p>
-
-<p>A burning world must be a smoking
-world, and from its furnaces
-must arise vast volumes of unconsumed
-carbon to mingle with suspended
-vapors.</p>
-
-<p>When Saturn’s rings fall to the
-body of the planet its moons will
-necessarily retire a little farther
-from it. Astronomers say that our
-moon is gradually retiring from the
-earth. Then it must have had an
-annular system which fell and
-caused the moon to recede.</p>
-
-
-<h3>FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE RECORD.</h3>
-
-<p>The vapors contained silex, quartz
-and whatever else was vaporized
-and suspended therein. After the
-atmosphere had cooled it deposited
-on the earth what it contained when
-heated. Much of the sedimentary
-beds built upon the Laurentian and
-older rocks were simply precipitated
-from the annular system.</p>
-
-<p>Iron and sulphur existed in the
-upper ocean as metallic and mineral
-salts. In the cooling process the
-heavier minerals and metals would
-necessarily locate nearest the earth
-and be the first to fall. True they
-were disseminated to a certain extent
-throughout the system.</p>
-
-<p>Iron and other heavy metals
-formed beds in the sea bottom.
-Iron from Iron Mountain, Mo.,
-and Pilot Knob, also lead and copper
-ores are in the Laurentian rocks.
-These rocks are aqueous or sedimentary.
-The annular matter fell but
-in small part in equatorial regions,
-but largely in temperate and frigid
-zones.</p>
-
-<p>It is folly to suppose that all the
-matter of aqueous beds were deposited
-from previous aqueous beds by
-denudation. How were subsequent
-lime deposits made from silicious
-Archaean beds? Denudation has
-taken place in all ages, and a fall
-and precipitation of exotic matter—tellurio-cosmic
-matter—aided in
-the work.</p>
-
-
-<h3>CONCLUSIONS REACHED.</h3>
-
-<p>1. All terrestial waters were
-held in suspension.</p>
-
-<p>2. This rotated as a part and
-parcel of the earth—a primeval
-atmosphere of great complexity of
-material.</p>
-
-<p>3. This suspended matter gathered
-in the earth’s equatorial heavens,
-and on condensing contracted
-and segregated into rings which
-revolved independently.</p>
-
-<p>4. The waters on high fell in a
-succession of stupendous cataclysms.</p>
-
-<p>5. The first ocean was impregnated
-with mineral and metallic
-salts.</p>
-
-<p>6. It required a vast lapse of
-time for rings to fall. Each ring
-continued to revolve as a belt about
-the earth with a decreasing velocity
-as it spread toward the poles and
-overcanopied the earth.</p>
-
-<p>7. The smoke or unconsumed
-carbon that arose from the earth,
-darkened the upper vapors and
-formed bands or belts.</p>
-
-<p>8. The moon retarded the rings,
-causing them to fall upon the earth,
-and it then receded from our planet.</p>
-
-<p>9. The Archaean metalliferous
-deposits are so located as to be inexplicable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
-by the old theory of
-aqueous denudation.</p>
-
-<p>10. The Silurian beds, and particularly
-the order of their occurrence
-utterly refutes the idea that
-they were derived from pre-existing
-beds.</p>
-
-
-<h3>DEMONSTRATED BY HISTORIC TESTIMONY.</h3>
-
-<p>In Gen. 1:7 God made the firmament
-and divided the waters
-which were under the firmament
-from the waters which were above
-the firmament. According to the
-Hebrew the atmosphere became an
-expanse between two bodies of
-waters, and of course the upper
-stratum had to move round the
-earth. In Gen. 1:3,4 light came in
-and garnished the heavens before
-the sun was seen.</p>
-
-<p>In the 10th. verse the waters on
-the earth were called seas, the water
-above the earth was called the deep,
-and the Spirit of God moved upon
-them. “And God said, Let there be
-light,” and light came upon the
-deep.</p>
-
-<p>In Gen 1:14-19 the sun which
-existed for ages did not appear in
-the heavens until after the sun
-brought forth grass, etc. Then it is
-plain that some intercepting canopy
-cut off the direct rays of the sun.</p>
-
-<p>The writer of Genesis did not say
-the sun and moon shone upon the
-earth, but he does say the stars did
-this. According to the Vailan
-theory this is true, but they shone
-in from polar regions.</p>
-
-<p>The earth’s surface was not heated
-by the sun’s direct rays, but under
-the overcanopying vapors it must
-have been warmed, and its temperature
-equalized by transmitted and
-diffused solar heat.</p>
-
-
-<h3>CONCLUSIONS.</h3>
-
-<p>There was a green-house temperature
-all over the earth at this time.
-Storms and tempests were unknown,
-as such phenomena are caused by
-sun-power, sun-heat falling directly
-upon the earth. Rains were infrequent,
-if at all.</p>
-
-<p>Man, in the day when solar actinism
-was shorn of its strength,
-must have experienced remarkable
-longevity, for upon solar energy
-depends every form and phaze of
-life on earth.</p>
-
-<p>The day of rest referred to in
-Gen. 2:3 in which God ceased from
-his labors was a windless, stormless,
-rainless, winterless age; for immediately
-we are told that “God had
-not caused it to rain upon the
-earth.” The climate was warm for
-man dwelt naked upon the earth.
-He was nurtured in a green-house
-world.</p>
-
-<p>The rainbow comes into view
-after the deluge for the first time.
-There could have been neither rain
-nor sunshine previously, just what
-the Vailan theory claims. The
-wind came upon the earth after the
-waters of the deluge had fallen, and
-not before.</p>
-
-<p>It was after the deluge that God
-said, “While the earth remaineth
-seed-time and harvest, and cold and
-heat, and summer and winter, and
-day and night shall not cease.” The
-period before the flood was nightless,
-and evening and morning were
-day; that is, they coalesced into one
-period called day.</p>
-
-<p>After the deluge the bow is given;
-man’s longevity declines; the winds
-come, and alternating seasons take
-place—all pointing to the fact that
-the antedeluvian world was overcanopied
-by annular waters.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p>
-
-<p>Every leaf of the geologic record
-declares that the world has been
-deluged time and again, which this
-theory also claims to be true, and to
-have taken place at the declension
-of each ring or stratum.</p>
-
-
-<h3>THE NOACHIAN DELUGE.</h3>
-
-<p>There is enough water now on
-the earth and in its rocky frame to
-make an hundred terrific deluges,
-every one of which could drown the
-world of living beings.</p>
-
-<p>In early days man believed there
-was a great deep on high. The
-sources of the deluge were “broken
-up,” and never again can the world
-be destroyed from that source. If
-the fountains of the deep were on
-the earth or in the seas then they
-are not “broken up.” If they were
-in the clouds, they were not, for that
-source still exists. Then we must
-believe that they came from beyond
-the clouds.</p>
-
-<p>With the fountain of the great
-deep placed on high—the veritable
-waters above the firmament—we can
-readily understand why the “windows
-of heaven were opened,” and
-why “all the fountains of the great
-deep were broken up.” The rainbow
-proclaims these facts around
-the circuit of the earth.</p>
-
-<p>How does it happen that the
-author of Genesis relates these facts
-with such harmonious accord, with
-all the conditions which an Annular
-arrangement of water necessitated,
-if the idea was not familiar to his
-mind?</p>
-
-<p>The presence of upper vapors entering
-the atmosphere on their way
-to the earth by the way of the polar
-regions necessitated an atmosphere
-of greater buoyancy and power, and
-this necessitated greater bodily
-frame. Hence it is said: “There
-were giants in those days.” There
-were giants among animals as well
-as men.</p>
-
-
-<h3>LEGENDS OF THE DELUGE.</h3>
-
-<p>Such wide-spread desolation as is
-accredited to the deluge of Noah
-must have made an indelible impression
-upon the human mind.
-We would naturally look for references
-to it in Aryan, Phoenecian,
-Greek and Hebrew history. They
-were the guardians of civilization.
-It is not difficult to co-link even the
-rudest form of the flood traditions
-with the terrible visitation so graphically
-related by Moses. Its shadow
-will never pass from the historic
-page.</p>
-
-<p>Men may criticise and ridicule
-the narrative given by Moses, yet
-the fact remains that a self-sustaining
-history is there; and the combined
-sophistry of all time cannot
-shake it.</p>
-
-<p>An account of that great catastrophe
-is found in the mythological
-narratives and traditional history of
-nearly or quite every people and
-tribe of Adam’s race.</p>
-
-<p>It is found among the Egyptians,
-Chaldeans, Greeks, Scythians and
-Celtic tribes. It has been discovered
-among the Peruvians and Mexicans;
-the aborigines of Cuba, of
-North America and the South Sea
-Islands. Even the inhabitants of
-Alaska preserve a tradition of the
-deluge; and all point unmistakably
-to the deluge of Noah.</p>
-
-<p>Recent investigations in the ruins
-of Nineveh, Babylon and in ancient
-cities of Egypt confirm it by tablets
-preserved as veritable books.</p>
-
-<p>Tradition as she sits amidst the
-crumbling ages of the past sings it
-in our ears, while the sound of a universal
-deluge has gone out through<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
-all the earth. It would require volumes
-to present these traditions
-alone.</p>
-
-
-<h3>AUGMENTATION OF OCEANIC WATERS.</h3>
-
-<p>Some portions of the earth are
-sinking while others are rising. The
-millions of cubic feet of matter deposited
-daily in the oceans by rivers
-would be sufficient to accomplish
-this. Every pound of matter thus
-transferred, <em>is an energy transferred</em>.
-In the course of 1,000 years, 1,000
-square miles of oceanic bottom
-would be covered to the depth of
-240 feet.</p>
-
-<p>This enormous pressure on the
-underlying rocks is so much transferred
-energy converted into
-mechanical heat. This must expand
-the rocks thus under increased
-pressure. If this sediment
-were not borne into the ocean
-along the Atlantic coast and spread
-out over vast areas it would be
-lined with mountains and volcanoes,
-as that of the Mediterranean sea;
-but being spread out over an extensive
-floor it prevents their formation
-by lateral pressure.</p>
-
-<p>Volcanoes are located where sediments
-can accumulate, and are
-doubtless the result of this accumulation.
-Sixty-five thousand feet of
-steel blocks piled one upon another
-would cause sufficient heat to melt
-the lower ones or reduce them to a
-plastic state. The lava that issues
-from a volcano is the deep bed-rock
-fused by pressure produced by
-lateral expansion. Accumulating
-sediments cause rock expansion in
-some regions, and being removed
-from others, causes contraction.
-Expansion elevates the earth’s crust;
-contraction lowers it.</p>
-
-<p>A downfall of water that would
-raise the ocean fifty feet above its
-present level would cause an expansion
-that no rocks could resist,
-and its lateral pressure must result
-in mountain making. The New
-England coast has been elevated in
-comparatively recent times. The
-St. Lawrence is so new that it has
-not yet swept its channel clean.</p>
-
-<p>From Nova Scotia to Florida and
-around the whole boundary of the
-Gulf of Mexico are the submerged
-shore-lines of a former continent.
-Many miles out the lead-line suddenly
-plunges from about 100 fathoms
-to from 200 to 1,500 fathoms.
-So around the British Isles, the
-coast of Norway, and that of Northern
-Europe and Asia. South America,
-Africa and the Pacific present
-the same characteristics. The
-course of a submerged continent has
-been traced in mid-ocean.</p>
-
-
-<h3>SUMMARY.</h3>
-
-<p>The Vailan Theory is proved,</p>
-
-<p>1. By mathematical reasoning
-and philosophic necessity.</p>
-
-<p>2. By the mineral character and
-philosophical deposition of strata.</p>
-
-<p>3. By analagous facts relating to
-other worlds, belted and ringed
-under the reign of law.</p>
-
-<p>4. By the action of the moon.</p>
-
-<p>5. By the records of man whose
-ancient writings declare, and re-declare,
-again and again, the truth
-of this claim. The first eight chapters
-of Genesis alone afford proof
-sufficient if all else failed.</p>
-
-<p>6. The waters on the earth themselves
-declare the fact.</p>
-
-
-<h3>GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES.</h3>
-
-<p>The first and most important element
-of the earth’s crust is carbon.
-Of the more than 60,000 feet of
-aqueous beds there are probably
-none that it does not enter into as
-an important factor. It was first<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
-driven from the earth by intense
-heat. The burning world was a
-smoking world. The unconsumed
-carbon commingled with the Annular
-vapors in the form of black,
-sooty, pitchy matter. This was deposited
-at the time of the deluge,
-and the waters that stood in seas,
-lakes and ponds deposited it as a
-layer of black, carbonaceous mud
-upon their bottoms. It may be
-found in ten thousand lakes planted
-in the Drift deposits in North America
-and Northern Europe.</p>
-
-<p>A black carbonaceous soil covers
-many Western States which were
-once covered by a vast inland sea.
-This sea was bounded on the west
-by the Rocky Mountains; south by
-the Ozark Mountains and the mountains
-of Tennessee and Kentucky,
-and emptied its waters into Lake
-Michigan.</p>
-
-<p>This great inland sea finally became
-a fresh-water body. The remains
-of the mastodon, mammoth
-and other pachyderms of interdiluvian
-times, as well as fresh-water shells are found. It made
-for itself two great outlets, the
-Mississippi and the St. Lawrence
-rivers. This inland sea must have
-been elevated 700 or 800 feet above
-the ocean, and was surrounded on
-all sides by walls, and covered an
-area of at least 500,000 square
-miles. We must conclude that
-some great down-rush of waters
-caused it to break its bounds in two
-directions at the same time.</p>
-
-<p>The fall of waters supplied the
-black, sooty carbon that settled to
-the bottom of the sea, remaining
-but a few inches thick on the hills,
-perhaps, but several feet in the
-valleys, and is the source of the
-peat bogs.</p>
-
-
-<h3>GLACIAL EPOCHS.</h3>
-
-<p>Previous to the glacial record
-there had closed a long period of
-perpetual spring. The primitive
-elephant, and many of his congeners
-and contemporaries, fed in luxurious
-forests and grassy plains toward
-the north pole, which are now covered
-with glaciers grinding their
-bones to dust. Northern regions
-which for untold ages had been covered
-with tropical vegetation, and
-animals of innumerable forms, began
-to be invaded by glaciers which
-slowly made their way toward the
-equator.</p>
-
-<p>The only way glaciers are now
-formed is by vapors wafted over
-them from adjacent lands warmed
-by solar heat; but they were not
-formed that way during the glacial
-epochs, but by the declension of annular
-vapors. Glacial ice cannot
-accumulate extensively now. <em>It
-flows</em>, and cannot be heaped up
-largely, its rate of motion being proportionate
-to the slope of its bed.
-The source of those snows which
-built a great continental ice cap
-over the northern hemisphere must
-be attributed to the Annular System.
-They accumulated in the St. Lawrence
-valley several thousand feet
-thick and towered over the New
-England mountains.</p>
-
-<p>Snow seldom falls in arctic regions
-now. Dr. Kane saw sledge
-tracks that were made several years
-previously. How then did those
-boundless reaches of snow and ice
-accumulate but by the descent of
-Annular vapors?</p>
-
-<p>Animals are found entombed in
-the frozen soil and snows under the
-arctic circle. For many years a
-large trade has been carried on in
-ivory, by Siberian traders, dug from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
-the frozen soil. Many of the animals,
-as the mammoth, rhinoceros,
-etc., remain undecayed, and in their
-stomachs and between their teeth
-are found the vegetation upon
-which they fed. And even the capillary
-blood vessels still retaining
-their contents, showing that there
-was not the slightest decomposition,
-but that the catastrophe which overwhelmed
-them was sudden. The
-climate was changed as by a stroke,
-which congealed and sealed the land
-in ice, locking the mammoth and
-other animals therein.</p>
-
-<p>Had those animals not been frozen
-soon as killed, putrification and decomposition
-must have taken place.
-Nothing but the down-rush of snows
-from the earth’s Annular System
-could have done this. These remains
-are dredged from the northern
-oceans, and they are also found
-fossilized over large portions of Siberia;
-in both cases being doubtless
-dropped from icebergs. The mammoth
-is found frozen in a glacier;
-the glacier was originally snow; the
-destruction must necessarily have
-been sudden.</p>
-
-<p>If not more than one tenth of the
-waters now upon the earth had fallen
-in the form of snow it would
-have covered the entire land surface
-of the globe more than 30,000 feet
-deep; and as one tenth must have
-fallen in polar regions it brings out
-the Annular Theory as a competent
-source. The sudden fall of snow
-sufficient to overwhelm a semi-tropical
-world could not accumulate in
-the atmosphere as it now does, and
-fall therefrom. It must have come
-from a source beyond the atmosphere.</p>
-
-<p>The overcanopying fund of vapors
-acted as a mighty robe to the earth,
-keeping out the cold of space, and
-equally distributing solar heat over
-the globe and causing terrestial
-warmth. The animals were much
-larger than their representatives are
-now, showing that the atmosphere
-was heavier and possessed more
-buoyant power by the pressure of a
-vast ocean of vapors in the higher
-regions.</p>
-
-<p>The downfall of water caused continual
-upheavals, and mountain
-making, which is proved by finding
-marine fossils along the seashore,
-and elsewhere far above the ocean.
-Terraces of the Champlain epoch in
-New England that must have been
-formed in the sea, are now found
-elevated hundreds of feet.</p>
-
-<p>All geologists agree that there
-have been many floods upon the
-earth. The great telluric glaciers of
-recent geologic times were melted
-under the tropic influence of the Annular
-vapors resulting in deluges.</p>
-
-<p>Under the vast pressure of the
-accumulated waters the plastic
-ocean bed goes down and forces its
-foundation under the continent by
-lateral pressure, and causes upturned
-and crumpled strata in many places,
-and also volcanic phenomena.</p>
-
-
-<h3>REVIEW OF THE GEOLOGIC RECORD.</h3>
-
-<p>The geologist has never yet found
-the base of the aqueous rocks, nor
-can he know how deep their foundations
-extend. When the Laurentian
-stratified beds were formed
-there was an ocean on the earth. A
-portion of the tellurio-cosmic waters
-had fallen.</p>
-
-<p>In the boulder and conglomerate
-rocks found in every age of geology
-there is proof that glaciers invaded
-the earth after the declension of
-each Annular stratum. The Annular<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>
-matter extended in comparatively
-narrow belts over the equator. As
-the lower stratum was attracted toward
-the earth it gradually spread
-out toward the polar regions, causing
-a warm climate all over the
-earth, and melting the snows and
-glaciers at the poles. This
-lasted untold ages until a tropic
-and semi-tropical vegetation spread
-over the earth. After its fall arctic
-cold invaded the north and south
-poles, pushing a vast ice cap toward
-the equator, which remained until
-another stratum of annular vapors
-spread over the globe. These ages
-of warmth and ages of cold continued
-to alternate until the fall of the
-last ring of vapors, which took place
-at the time of the Noachian deluge,
-causing that catastrophe.</p>
-
-<p>The sudden destruction of life, at
-the end of each age in geology,
-must have been caused by sudden
-cold. The waters reaching the
-earth at the poles must cause refrigeration;
-must cause excessive
-floods; must cause extermination of
-specific forms of life; must cause new
-distribution and condition of oceanic
-waters, and caused great folding
-and crumpling of strata.</p>
-
-<p>In the dissolving of glaciers a vast
-pressure was lifted from the continents
-and transferred to the ocean
-beds, causing them to go down and
-the land to be elevated.</p>
-
-
-<h3>SEED BED OF ORGANISMS.</h3>
-
-<p>From the days of Homer until the
-present time we read of dust-storms
-of living organisms falling upon the
-earth, and colored snow, the coloring
-matter being microscopic forms
-of life. The dust is doubtless of
-cosmic origin. There must be micro-cosmic
-clouds moving in interplanetary
-space, which meeting the
-earth in its path, are precipitated
-upon its surface.</p>
-
-<p>We can scarcely conceive of matter
-anywhere without associating it
-with living forms. The outermost
-vapors of the annular system, which
-fell in the time of Noah, remained
-on high for unknown millions of
-years, receiving constant additions
-of meteoric and cosmic dust from
-without. As the gaseous envelope
-that now surrounds our earth contains
-living organisms, we must believe
-the annular matter did also,
-and to a much greater degree.</p>
-
-<p>If Jupiter’s belted system had
-long ago descended to the body of
-that planet, so that we could gaze
-upon the continents and seas as we
-do those of Mars, we would conclude
-that they swarmed with life. An
-incomplete world must contain incomplete
-or primordial life-forms;
-forms that in time must develop.
-In yellow snow, dust showers, “blood
-rains,” etc. we have evidence that
-organic forms are natural accompaniments
-of the nebulous and elementary
-forms of matter.</p>
-
-<p>Spider showers are well authenticated.
-Sometimes the air is filled
-with their gossamer threads upon
-which they mount to unknown depths
-of space, where they live. If spiders
-can live in the air, descend to the
-earth and live there for a time, and
-toads can live for untold ages immured
-in solid rock, they could live
-in belts of aqueous and mineral
-matter. The manner in which organisms
-have succeeded each other
-on the earth as revealed by the geologic
-records demands that the annular
-system was the cradle of infant
-life, the propagating beds in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
-which the life-germs were placed by
-the great Gardener of Nature.</p>
-
-<p>It is as reasonable to suppose that
-germs took form in water under the
-creative hand before they fell to the
-earth as afterward, and when we see
-that each downfall brought new
-life-forms which exhibit no specific
-or generic relation to previous
-forms, we are forced to admit that
-either the seed beds of the Annular
-system provided the undeveloped
-organisms, or there was a special
-creation at each period.</p>
-
-<p>In the Silurian age there was an
-ocean containing heavy calcarious
-matter; in the Devonian silicious
-and silicio-calcarious matter; in the
-Carboniferous carbonaceous matter,
-and each ocean had its characteristic
-life-forms. But if all the
-waters fell at one time, how is it
-possible for each age to have had
-an ocean containing characteristic
-minerals? These characteristic minerals
-fell with each ring, which
-marked the ages of geology, destroying
-previous life-forms and introducing
-new ones. Eozoic rocks
-were laid down 40,000 feet thick.
-Upon these were piled Silurian 65,000
-feet thick; on these Devonian
-rocks 15,000 feet, and then comes
-17,000 feet of Carboniferous rocks,
-each age having characteristic fossils
-and mineral deposits. As these
-deposits were laid down by the sea,
-why do they so widely differ in their
-composition if they all fell at the
-same time from above! The Potsdam
-sandstone underlies the Silurian
-rocks. It spread from the Canadas
-to Texas, from the Alleghanies
-to the Rocky mountains, and probably
-forms a casement around the
-globe. It is 8,000 feet thick, and
-shows a mechanical and rapid accumulation,
-pointing unmistakably to
-the downfall of a silicious ring.</p>
-
-<p>The Annular theory admits of the
-universal eroding power of rivers
-and waves; the transporting power
-of currents and strata building from
-detrital matter. But waves can do
-nothing unless supplied with matter.
-Where did they get the crystalline,
-granulated and infusorial matter to
-spread over the floor of the Silurian
-ocean? Great beds of metals have
-been laid down as regularity stratified
-deposits which could not have
-been borne from Archaean terranes.</p>
-
-
-<h3>CARBON STRATA DEPOSITED AS AN AQUEOUS
-SEDIMENT.</h3>
-
-<p>Carbon composing a peat bed is
-simply unconsumed carbon. The
-carbon or smoke that arises from
-every chimney and furnace when
-measurably shut up from immediate
-union with oxygen, remains an unburnt
-fuel precisely the same in
-kind as the unburnt carbon fuel of
-the peat bogs. Were we to collect
-the unburnt carbon from our chimneys
-in piles, where moisture and
-air could have free access, it would
-take fire spontaneously and burn,
-just as peat dug from the bog sometimes
-takes fire and burns.</p>
-
-<p>The millions of fires from foundries,
-volcanoes, etc., are forming
-fuel wherever soot is formed, and
-were it not for the ever active oxygen
-of the air, it would all descend
-upon the earth as fuel and become
-incorporated in forming sedimentary
-beds. This is our claim for the
-coal, which as unconsumed carbon
-arose beyond the reach of destroying
-oxygen, from the heated, glowing
-furnace of our globe, and in
-time returned to the earth.</p>
-
-<p>When the plant dies and begins<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>
-to decay one of its constituent elements,
-carbon, oxydizes by slow
-combustion and returns to the air
-as an invisible gas. It is but accidental
-when a particle fails to become
-oxydized and remains as unconsumed
-carbon. An exceedingly
-small part of vegetation remains unburnt.</p>
-
-<p>Coal veins, which are from one
-foot to three hundred feet thick,
-would make a stratum around the
-earth ten feet thick. Fifty pounds
-of coal will yield 10,000 gallons of
-carbonic acid. Then calling eight
-gallons equal to one cubic foot the
-astonishing fact comes out that the
-coal beds actually draw from the
-atmosphere an ocean of carbonic
-acid which would have covered the
-globe to the depth of 12,500 feet,
-which would have destroyed all animal
-life. Even three or four per
-cent. of carbonic acid in our present
-atmosphere would be fatal to animal
-life. Hence it is clear that
-coal cannot be attributed to vegetable
-origin.</p>
-
-
-<h3>CONCLUSIONS REACHED.</h3>
-
-<p>The following conclusions are
-clearly deducible:</p>
-
-<p>1. The Annular system was a region
-of microscopic life and infusorial
-forms. Coal being deposited
-by sea-water carried down with it
-marine forms, and others settled
-upon its surface.</p>
-
-<p>2. The carbon deposits must
-have borne down a vast amount of
-marine vegetation and buried it
-upon the sea bottom. In swamp
-marshes the vegetation would have
-been entirely different.</p>
-
-<p>3. When a carbon fall was borne
-to the seas and settled where limestone
-strata prevailed it would indicate
-great distance from the shore,
-and here the roof shales of the
-coal must be necessarily free from
-land fossils. Coal beds amongst
-sandstone strata indicate depositions
-near shore, and may contain land
-fossils.</p>
-
-<p>4. The coal beds must be more
-heavily developed toward polar regions,
-and most free from impurities.</p>
-
-<p>5. All carbon downfalls must
-have been attended by great cataclysms
-of snow, or water, or both.</p>
-
-<p>6. A coal vein deposited near a
-volcano, or mechanical heat arising
-therefrom would be metamorphosed
-into heavier and harder forms of
-carbon. But as all grades must
-have existed in the Annular system
-as primitive distillates, all of these
-forms may be found in lands where
-no strata disturbance has taken
-place.</p>
-
-<p>7. The heavy carbon, as the anthracite
-and semi-bituminous particles
-would be borne to the deep
-seas, while the lighter would float
-into shallow water. Hence a submarine
-valley might have a deposit
-of anthracite while a neighboring
-bed on an elevation might be bituminous.</p>
-
-<p>8. In both northern and southern
-hemispheres the coal must be
-more valuable as we proceed from
-the equator.</p>
-
-<p>9. There must have been carbon
-falls in all ages, and the first were
-the purest and the best, while the
-last to descend must have been the
-lightest and poorest, and must be
-found near the surface, or are the
-foundations of recent peat bogs.</p>
-
-<p>Peat vegetation, or moss known
-by the generic name of <em>Sphagnous</em>,
-has led many to believe it to be the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
-origin of that product. But these
-<em>sphagnous</em> mosses could never have
-planted themselves over the medial
-and colder latitudes if the carbon
-beds necessary to sustain them had
-not previously been planted there.
-If coal and peat are vegetable products
-they should exist in greater
-abundance in tropical regions; but
-they are found in limited quantity
-there.</p>
-
-
-<h3>IS COAL A VEGETABLE PRODUCT?</h3>
-
-<p>The usually accepted theory concerning
-the origin of coal is that it
-was formed from an ancient vegetation
-that grew largely in peat and
-swamp marshes. This theory the
-Vailan system overthrows.</p>
-
-<p>Every atom of the great mass of
-carbon now forming the coal deposits
-must have been a distilled
-product of a primitive igneous process
-before the plant could possibly
-appropriate it. Every intelligent
-chemist knows that the great telluric
-gas furnace of primitive times
-was competent to produce all the
-carbon now found in the crust of
-the earth. Soot, that sometimes
-takes fire in our chimneys, is deposited
-in infinitesimal smoke particles.
-Hence, smoke from burning
-carbon is simply a fuel which makes
-it evident that the smoke which
-arose from the igneous earth was a
-fuel hydro-carbon. The dark belts
-of Saturn and Jupiter are doubtless
-strata of carbon revolving about
-those planets.</p>
-
-<p>If the Vailan theory is true the
-graphites and heavier forms of carbon
-were the first to fall upon the
-earth after the igneous period was
-passed, and will be found in its
-first aqueous beds, and generally
-unassociated with fossil vegetation.
-This is precisely what we do find.
-Both Dana and Dawson bear testimony
-to the fact that graphite is a
-very common mineral in the older
-beds, and that the primitive carbon
-beds are equal in gravity to that of
-similar areas in the carboniferous
-system.</p>
-
-<p>Why no fossil plants in the earlier
-coal deposits? Because no plants
-grew at that time. Then we must
-look for its origin elsewhere than in
-plants. If coal be a vegetable product,
-so is graphite. To say that
-animal organism aided in the process
-simply adds to the difficulty,
-since it is carbon that makes the
-organism and not the organism the
-carbon. But suppose fossil plants
-were found in graphite, would it be
-any more evidence that they formed
-it than that they formed clay or
-sandrock in which they are found?
-The simple fact that organic fossils
-are found in carbon beds changed
-to carbon affords no evidence that
-these organisms made the beds.</p>
-
-<p>We find vegetable remains in coal
-seams just as we find them in any
-other rock. A coal plant as a
-lepidodendron, may begin in the
-lower clay, and pierce through a
-coal seam into the overhanging
-shale and sandstone. In the first it
-is a clay fossil, in the second a carbonaceous
-fossil, and in the third a
-silicious fossil. The fact is the
-trunk of a tree in an upright position
-in a coal bed, which is quite
-common, proves that the coal formed
-around it rapidly. It would require
-forty feet of vegetable debris to
-make five feet of carbon. Some
-coal seams are 300 feet thick, which
-would require at least 2,400 feet of
-vegetable growth in its formation,
-which is an impossibility. As a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>
-vegetable product coal would form
-very slowly, but from the Vailan
-system would require but a few
-hours, or days at most, to lay it
-down.</p>
-
-<p>Plants found in coal burn with
-difficulty, which ought not to be
-true if they contained a resinous
-sap, or bituminous matter. In many
-instances you can find a dozen fossil
-plants in the overlying clay to
-where you can find one in coal.
-They are clay fossils because they
-are imbedded in clay, same as fossils
-in coal are carbon because imbedded
-in carbon.</p>
-
-<p>If coal is compressed peat, as some
-would have us believe, why do we
-not find fibres running vertically
-through it? You may examine peat
-after a pressure of twenty tons to
-the square inch has been exerted,
-and yet the vertical structure of
-the mass will be apparent. Since
-we find abundance of rootlets running
-in all directions, vertically as
-well as horizontally in the under
-clays of coal beds it is evident that
-coal is not a metamorphosed peat.</p>
-
-<p>Imagine an expanse of marshes
-100,000 square miles in extent, covered
-with calamites, ferns, sigillaria,
-lepidodendra remaining motionless
-for countless centuries, and then
-suddenly sinking beneath the waves
-of the sea in order to receive a sea-formed
-bed for a covering; and in the
-universal burial to preserve but a
-few fossils, and they in a horizontal
-position, while in the clays immediately
-above and below the coal beds
-they are found in profusion; that in
-due time the vast area arose from
-its baptism, and on the thin layer
-of clay millions of the same plants
-grew until they formed another bed
-of coal, when it sinks again beneath
-the waves, and this oscillation continued
-until it had been buried
-twenty, forty or one hundred times,
-and you have the old theory of how
-coal was formed.</p>
-
-<p>But if the old theory concerning
-the formation of coal is correct, how
-did it occur that the earth in rising
-out of the ocean stopped each time
-in the right place for swamp vegetation
-to accumulate? According
-to the highest authority coal is not
-formed from sea-plants, for they
-cannot emit any considerable
-amount of caloric, but it is the product
-of land plants. Then why do
-we find coal scattered over a vast
-area of sea bottom?</p>
-
-<p>The structure of continents show
-that they have remained such from
-their first formation. Some of the
-geologic formations, as the Carboniferous-conglomerates,
-took place all
-over the earth at the same time.
-How could this be except it came
-from the Annular system?</p>
-
-<p>Were we to have a shower of carbon
-dust it would settle to the bottom
-of the sea all over the irregularities
-of the same. Then sand beds
-accumulating for ages would settle
-over it. These would form a greater
-thickness in some places than in
-others; hence a succeeding fall of
-carbon settling upon the ocean floor
-would not form a bed exactly parallel
-with the first. This is precisely
-what we find to be true in the carbon
-deposits. The distance in coal
-seams may vary from twenty feet in
-one place to forty feet in another
-place in the same neighborhood,
-which is the result of irregularity
-in the ocean floor.</p>
-
-<p>Bowlders are found in coal seams
-which means that coal beds have
-been formed under water; and if a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
-foreign bowlder that the coal seam
-was formed at the bottom of the
-ocean. Bowlders have been found
-in the middle of coal seams with
-glacial marks upon them, showing
-that they have been dropped from
-icebergs into the forming coal beds
-at the bottom of the sea. Foreign
-water-worn bowlders are frequently
-found in coal beds.</p>
-
-<p>Stratas of coal may be separated
-by layers of clay not more than half
-an inch in thickness; how could vegetation
-take root in so thin a layer
-of clay sufficient to form the overlying
-coal seam of probably several
-feet? Suppose a great carbon fund
-should float from the Arctic ocean
-into Hudson Bay. It would settle
-upon an undulating bottom, and if a
-flood of muddy water from the surrounding
-rivers should empty into
-the bay while the carbon bed was
-forming, a thin clay bed would be
-the result. This might continue as
-long as the carbon was brought
-from the Arctic regions.</p>
-
-<p>The floating mass of primitive
-carbon clouds after they entered
-the atmosphere and floated away for
-centuries, perhaps, toward the polar
-regions in their efforts to reach the
-earth, became a tissue of evolving
-vegetable organisms and vegetable
-forms. Take fresh soot from a furnace
-soon as it is formed, subject it
-to hot vapors from boiling waters
-and store it away in an open vessel
-of water, and you will soon see vegetable
-and animal organisms start
-into being. Then why not find organisms
-in revolving soot clouds in
-the Annular system?</p>
-
-<p>Marine vegetation exists on the
-sea bottom, and a carbon sediment
-rapidly accumulating would certainly
-involve it.</p>
-
-<p>Under almost all the carbon veins
-lies a deposit of fire clay. Strange
-that adjoining a highly combustible
-bed, a substance should be invariably
-planted that is so refractory as
-to be used for crucibles in fusing
-almost every known metal! In this
-bed lies involved a profuse marine
-vegetation, and the preservation of
-its delicate lineaments proves that
-it was suddenly involved. It is
-more generally present under coal
-veins that are more distant from the
-tropics, and <em>invariably</em> in the most
-distant ones. The fire clay-dust
-sublimed in the great telluric crucible
-arose to commingle with primitive
-vapors and returned with them.
-When a carbon fall occurred the
-clay matter being of greater specific
-gravity was the first to find its way
-to the ocean floor.</p>
-
-<p>This fire clay is found under beds
-of primitive graphite where no vegetation
-is involved, and therefore
-cannot be a vegetable distillation.
-It is found where glacial action is
-unknown, and cannot be mud pulverized
-by moving ice. Every one
-of the more than seventy coal seams
-of the Nova Scotia regions has its
-characteristic clay-bed. When we
-see trees standing in and surrounded
-by this clay we are forced to admit
-a rapid accumulation.</p>
-
-<p>Limestone is a deep sea formation
-and the Vailan system demands
-that standing trees should not be
-found in it. Only such limestone
-formation or strata as were deposited
-as mechanical precipitation could
-be formed in shallow waters, especially
-in regions beyond the tropics.
-A limestone stratum deposited
-among shore deposits or continental
-detritus points directly to Annular
-origin and vegetable fossils will occur<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
-in the upper clays. Here geologists
-have an opportunity to prove
-or disprove the Annular problem.</p>
-
-<p>Coal and peat are not found in
-the tropics where they ought to be
-found if vegetation produced them.
-And if they could be found there it
-would sweep the Vailan system from
-its foundations. They are found,
-however, just where this system says
-they must be found. Why is peat
-found in the ocean, and in the
-thousands of lakes and ponds where
-no peat vegetation is now growing?
-Suppose we find a peat bed forty
-feet thick, it must have been at one
-time a lake with forty feet of water,
-and how did the peat begin to grow?
-Peat forms slowly and the rains and
-storms would have worked mud,
-etc., more rapidly into it than the
-peat would have filled it. It would
-neither have grown from the top
-nor from the bottom. The foundation
-carbon fell from the Annular
-fund.</p>
-
-
-<h3>METAMORPHISM OF CARBON BEDS.</h3>
-
-<p>When bituminous or lignitic coal,
-or even peat is subjected to a sufficient
-degree of heat it is converted
-into hard coal and sometimes into
-graphite. From this source some
-conclude that anthracite and all
-hard coals are metamorphosed beds
-of soft carbon. But how about the
-vast beds in aqueous crusts hundreds
-of miles from any igneous
-agencies? All anthracite coal
-changed from bituminous coal will
-contain a greater per cent. of ash
-than the coal from which it is derived.
-If it does not it is evidence
-that it never was bituminous coal.</p>
-
-<p>Let us suppose a heavy fall of
-Annular carbon in the north Atlantic
-ocean, and that the Appalachian
-mountains were again under
-the sea. The carbon carried by the
-ocean currents southward would
-fall to the sea bottom in the more
-quiet waters. The heavy or anthracite
-dust would reach the bottom in
-deep waters where the lighter forms
-would not. Before the Appalachian
-upheaval, the eastern base of the
-system was farther out in the sea,
-and was in deeper waters than the
-western. The constitution of the
-coal itself, the condition of the sea
-bottom (sloping from the coast to
-the deep sea) point harmoniously to
-the annular origin of the carbon
-beds. The bituminous dust not being
-able to directly settle with the
-anthracite remained longer in suspension
-which accounts for its
-greater amount of ash. The farther
-south it floated, the more impure
-it became. The heaviest beds of
-anthracite will be found in the
-northern part of the great plateau,
-and principally in British America
-if the Vailan theory is true.</p>
-
-<p>Fossil plants in coal are generally
-mineralized charcoal, and are difficult
-of combination. If the bed
-was composed of vegetable production
-the same difficulty would certainly
-characterize the mass. Hence
-the plant is simply a foreign body
-in a bed of mineral carbon. Coal
-seams have become so hard as to be
-planed off by eroding forces directly
-after being laid down, or before
-heavy beds had accumulated over
-them. Thus they could not have
-been formed by vegetable peat.</p>
-
-
-<h3>TERTIARY COALS.</h3>
-
-<p>Extensive coal beds in Asia are
-probably Tertiary, while the vast
-carbon beds among the Rocky
-Mountains, and underlying the vast<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>
-plain to the west of these mountains,
-were formed in the Tertiary
-period. The Rocky Mountain plateau
-on which the coal beds are
-planted existed as a sea bottom over
-which the waters from the Arctic
-world rolled during the Tertiary
-period. The Rocky Mountain region
-was then sleeping in the sea.</p>
-
-<p>The Tertiary beds reach from
-Mexico to the Arctic ocean, proving
-that currents ran toward the equator
-along the valley of the McKenzie,
-bearing into southern waters whatever
-fell from the upper world. It
-is thus easy to see how the vast expanse
-of this western world became
-the receptacle of Tertiary carbon.
-Finding no Tertiary coals on the
-Eastern border of our continent
-we are led to believe that a narrow
-continent stretched from America
-to Europe across the present bed of
-the Atlantic and hindered the flow
-of carbon along the Atlantic seaboard.
-It is now conceded by geologists
-that such an isthmus of land
-reached from Newfoundland to the
-shores of Europe during the Tertiary
-period. This being true a
-vast fund of carbon must lie at the
-bottom of the North Atlantic.</p>
-
-<p>If these later coals had been
-formed out of vegetation growing
-in great continental swamps, the
-same opportunity was afforded by
-the southern sea borders for this
-swamp vegetation. And so from
-Long Island to the Rio Grande.
-Why then do we not find it
-if coal is of vegetable origin? If
-the vast fund of the lignitic coals
-is a vegetable production it was
-present in the Tertiary atmosphere
-as a deadly poison. But at that
-time both land and sea were full of
-air-breathing mammals and monsters
-showing conclusively that it
-was not there in such a condition.</p>
-
-
-<h3>DEDUCTIONS.</h3>
-
-<p>1. The plant when subjected to
-a proper mode of distillation is
-made to yield carbon in various allotropic
-forms. So of any mineral
-that has carbon in its constitution.
-These forms of carbon were placed
-in the crust of the earth after the
-primitive fires had died out.</p>
-
-<p>2. All such primitive distillations
-existed in the atmosphere of the
-incandescent earth.</p>
-
-<p>3. This matter as it declined and
-mingled with the atmosphere in
-after ages, changed from the ring to
-the belt form, and overcanopied the
-earth and fell largely in regions
-outside the tropics.</p>
-
-<p>4. The heavier forms of carbon
-fell largely in the earlier ages;
-though all sections of the system
-must have had some of each form.</p>
-
-<p>5. All ages were more or less
-characterized by carbon falls, and
-no age could be exclusively carboniferous.</p>
-
-<p>6. Carbon falling directly into
-the ocean would separate into heavier
-and lighter forms and settle
-accordingly in higher or lower elevations
-of sea bottom, thus explaining
-why different forms of coal are
-found in the same proximate horizon.</p>
-
-<p>7. The earliest or heavier forms
-are free from organic remains, and
-must therefore be a primitive distillation.
-The other carbon beds by
-their associated strata; by their involved
-vegetation and other organisms;
-by accompanying clay-partings;
-by involved glacial drift; by
-latitudinal gradation in quantity of
-ash and specific gravity; by characteristic
-absence from the tropics and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
-the heavy deposits in higher latitudes;
-by synchronous formation in
-all continents; by their evident formation
-in the very lap and bosom of
-the glacier and in ice and flood; by
-the fact that they are bituminous,
-oily hydro-carbons, and by a multitude
-of inconsistencies and impossibilities
-involved in the vegetation
-theory, have been shown to be actual
-sedimentary deposits, and therefore
-a primitive product.</p>
-
-<p>Since then there is not a feature
-connected with the formation of coal
-that is not readily explained by the
-primitive carbon theory; not one
-that philosophic law does not resolve
-into harmony with Annular
-declension without even the show of
-conflict; and since vegetarians are
-forever stumbling upon inexplicable
-difficulties—bowlders, pebbles, undulations,
-slopes, ripple-marks, clay-partings,
-cannel-coal inseparably
-joined with bituminous coal, anthracites
-with less amount of ash, marine
-impurities, carbon planted in Archaean
-beds, air-breathing animals
-among Tertiary coals, carbon
-dredged from the ocean, dug from
-the frozen world, and innumerable
-other objections over which they can
-not climb, the vegetation theory can
-not be true.</p>
-
-
-<h3>ANNULAR DOWNFALL IN THE TERTIARY
-OCEAN OF THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE.</h3>
-
-<p>If the Vailian theory claims are
-valid the beds in the Rocky Mountain
-Tertiary must present the following
-features: The Cretaceous
-period having been brought to a
-close by a down-rush of waters and
-snows in the northern hemisphere,
-a stream of water pouring southward
-must to a great extent have
-been a fresh-water current, and
-those deposits in the extreme northern
-beds of the Rocky Mountain
-region must be largely fresh-water
-accumulations. Those in the middle
-of this region must be to a less
-extent fresh-water; perhaps sometimes
-fresh and again marine, owing
-to changes in currents, etc., and
-the two be commingled, while in
-the southern part the beds must
-be almost exclusively marine. Fortunately
-for the Vailian theory these
-demands are fully met. The waters
-of this vast region communicated
-with the Arctic ocean, probably by
-way of the present depression in
-British America, along the valley of
-the McKenzie river, while south it
-communicated with the Gulf of
-Mexico.</p>
-
-<p>Here was a sea forty times larger
-than Lake Erie. Where did the
-water come from that made the
-northern part fresh, the middle part
-brackish and the southern portion
-marine? The Tertiary of the Pacific
-Coast is marine; so is a larger portion
-of the Atlantic border. Doubtless
-Davis Strait poured a volume
-of fresh-water from the polar world
-into the Atlantic, for there is the
-same commingling of marine and
-fresh-water shells on the northeast
-coast, while in the northern part
-they are exclusively fresh-water
-species. Rivers could not have
-done this, for all the rivers from
-Delaware Bay around the coast of
-the Gulf of Mexico were not sufficient
-to lay down fresh-water Tertiary.
-Admit that the vast polar
-ocean of the Tertiary period was a
-body of fresh-water, and all difficulties
-disappear.</p>
-
-<p>Geologists admit that in the Tertiary
-period mountains were made
-on every continent, that there was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
-world-wide disturbance of strata,
-and the most complete extermination
-of species on record. The
-Cretaceous world was swept by a
-mighty cataclysmic wave, and its
-animals were buried in the detrital
-mass swept from the land into the
-seas and formed the lower Eocene
-beds. Nothing of which we can
-conceive could do this but a downpour
-of Annular waters. One-third
-of North America, a great part of
-Northern Europe, nearly all of Siberia,
-much of China, and other
-parts of Asia were apparently synchronously
-submerged beneath
-<em>fresh-water</em>.</p>
-
-<p>The ocean of fresh-water proves
-the augmentation of snows from the
-great super-aerial fund. The Cretaceous
-age closed by excessive and
-unusual refrigeration. The transported
-blocks of stone found in the
-Upper Cretaceous and Lower Tertiary
-point to a northern origin. The
-evidence is overwhelmingly in favor
-of an Annular fall of waters in the
-north polar world at that time.</p>
-
-<p>Existing continents were submerged
-under Cretaceous waters.
-The Rocky Mountains, Andes, Alps
-and Himalayas were either unborn
-or in their infant stage. But some
-mighty barrier was raised that
-rolled the Cretaceous waters southward,
-and made an isolated fresh-water
-ocean on the north. It was
-the great Atlantic plateau reaching
-from Newfoundland to Ireland,
-which is known by actual soundings
-and other evidence to be a submerged
-table land. It was raised
-from the deep at this very time and
-stood for uncounted milleniums as
-dry land.</p>
-
-<p>Suppose an ice cap 5000 feet thick
-should suddenly cover the Arctic
-world. It would press that part of
-the globe inward and downward
-upon itself even if the planet were
-solid to the centre. It would render
-the rocks plastic and they would be
-pushed under the continents causing
-the crust of the earth to rise into
-mountains in many places. Just
-what occurred in Cretaceous and
-Tertiary times.</p>
-
-<p>We can trace the shore-line of an
-almost limitless fresh-water sea
-around the whole hemisphere in
-Tertiary times, showing that the
-Arctic ocean was a wide expanse of
-fresh-waters. This leads to the positive
-and permanent establishment
-of the Vailian or Annular theory.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<h3>THE LAST ADVANCE OF GLACIERS.</h3>
-
-<p>The last downfall of exterior
-vapors was at the time of Noah, and
-produced the deluge. These vapors
-naturally gravitated toward the
-polar regions and falling there as
-snows would accumulate as glaciers,
-their magnitude and extent corresponding
-with the amount of falling
-snows. It is evident if there ever
-was an Eden climate upon the earth
-its destruction was brought about
-by a change of climate. If the
-Deluge was a collapse of the last
-remnant of upper waters the latter
-must have begun to fall in polar
-regions many centuries previous.</p>
-
-<p>The Eden world suffered a change
-of climate during the Adamic age,
-for the race that dwelt naked in
-Eden became clothed in the skins
-of animals. If this infant race
-dwelt naked the climate was warm.
-If afterward it became necessary to
-be clothed with the skins of animals
-it certainly had become cold. If<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>
-the cold increased it was probably
-caused by the fall of snow in polar
-regions. The physical condition of
-the antedeluvians and their environment
-depended on the conditions of
-the upper vapors. Hence, polar
-glaciers began to advance in Edenic
-times.</p>
-
-<p>Glaciers advanced slowly, and are
-still advancing. Eight hundred
-years ago Greenland was not the
-frigid land it now is. The Icelanders
-and the Northmen sailed through
-northern seas in the interest of
-commerce where now our hardiest
-seamen with iron-clad vessels
-scarcely dare to venture. They
-pushed forward commercial enterprises
-into lands that are now inhospitable
-and uninhabited.</p>
-
-<p>The present glaciation of polar
-worlds is but the result of the last
-declension of outward vapors. The
-great ice caps of polar regions are
-moving toward the equator and are
-constantly diminishing. It is possible
-that we are approaching a day
-when the last ice berg will be borne
-toward the tropics, and the last
-glacier will melt, and a more genial
-climate pervade the greater portion
-of the earth.</p>
-
-
-<h3>LONGEVITY OF THE ANCIENTS.</h3>
-
-<p>According to the biblical account
-people lived to be 800 and 900
-years old. This was principally
-because of the modification of solar
-energy. Man’s physical environments
-impelled long life; and his
-longevity diminished immediately
-after the upper deep fell and the
-sun began to pour his beams upon
-the race; his environment evidently
-changed with that event. In a few
-generations after the flood man died
-at the age of 120 or 100 years, and
-finally at three score and ten.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter illowe5" id="image_3">
- <img class="w100" src="images/image_3.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="LETTER_FROM_PROF_I_N_VAIL">LETTER FROM PROF. I. N. VAIL.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Dr. Bowers</span>: I have read
-with much interest thy compendium
-of “The Earth’s Annular System,”
-as published by me in 1886. A synopsis
-of that work can give but a
-meager idea of the grand conception
-of the annular evolution of the
-earth. “The Annular Theory” stands
-on the immutable truth that worlds
-evolve according to invariable law.</p>
-
-<p>This compels us to admit that all
-worlds are made alike, in the general
-changes they undergo. Just as
-a bud evolves into a flower of the
-most delicate construction and architectural
-order, so a world launched
-from the same designing Hand must
-move in the same line of eternal
-order, and under the law of natural
-uniformity develop and grow into a
-completed world.</p>
-
-<p>This also leads us to the conclusion
-that if one world possess at any
-time an annular system, then all
-worlds must possess a similar appendage
-during some period of their
-existence. Consequently that simple
-fact that the planet Saturn possesses
-at this time an annular or ring system
-is proof that the earth once had
-a similar appendage. For we must
-either admit this truth or we must
-admit that the planet Saturn has
-not evolved thus far along a line of
-nature’s uniformity, but is today a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
-victim of accidental conditions. This
-law refuses to admit.</p>
-
-<p>But “The Annular Theory” does
-not rest on these grounds alone. A
-universe of <em>invariable order</em> pronounces
-it an immutable truth. The
-judgment of the chemist and philosopher
-is positive that a rotating
-world cannot pass from the molten
-state to the present condition of the
-earth without undergoing annular
-changes.</p>
-
-<p>Since the publication of “The
-Earth’s Annular System” I have had
-opportunities of examining more
-minutely the subjects treated of
-therein and have secured the most
-overwhelming evidence that the
-theory there proposed is in the main
-correct and will stand the test of all
-time. I have found, outside the
-realm of physical science, the most
-positive evidence that primitive man
-actually saw at least two rings revolving
-about the earth, named
-them and worshiped them as gods.
-These relics I have rescued from the
-wreck of ages, and <em>with</em> these I will
-prove the fact that this earth once
-had a complex system of Saturn-like
-rings.</p>
-
-<p>Thus in the end the geologist and
-astronomer will be compelled to admit
-its truthfulness whether they
-desire to or not. I have found
-among the ruins of ancient Egypt,
-Babylonia, India and China annular
-fossils, the identification of which
-settles at once and forever this great
-question.</p>
-
-<p>Again, I need not point the geologist
-to the mysteries of the glacial
-epochs, which grow darker and
-darker as he looks for a competent
-cause for their production. He
-must know that the great ocean of
-vapors that hovered for unknown
-time over the earth in the loftiest
-heights of the atmosphere, such as
-now are seen on two of our neighbor
-planets, could not have fallen to the
-earth without covering it in the
-higher latitudes with measureless
-masses of snow, resulting in excessive
-refrigeration. I need but point
-him to the fact, proven by the coast
-surveys of the world, that the oceans
-have encroached upon the land to
-such an extent since the last glacial
-epoch that they stand now fully
-thirty fathoms deeper than they did
-in pre-glacial times. I need only
-point him to that grand clock-work
-of worlds shining from the firmament—every
-scintillating point,
-every rolling sun, is a witness of
-nature’s eternal order, and proclaims
-that uniformitarian principle of
-world evolution, by which the philosophic
-investigator must stand. The
-geologist must build on this rock of
-<em>uniformity</em> in the evolution of worlds.
-The earth has evolved along <em>this</em>
-line, and the wreck of annular conditions
-is seen on every page of its
-rocky volume.</p>
-
-<p>In the year 1875 I published a
-little volume entitled “The Earth’s
-Aqueous Ring.” In it I stated my
-convictions, and gave reasons therefor,
-that all the glacial periods the
-world ever saw were produced by
-supra-aerial vapors descending from
-an annular system that revolved
-about the earth from the remotest
-geologic ages to the flood of Noah,
-which was itself produced by the
-fall of the last remnants of those
-upper waters. These claims I am
-fully prepared to substantiate, whatever
-opposition may be brought
-against them.</p>
-
-<p class="right mb0">
-<span class="smcap">Isaac N. Vail</span>,</p>
-
-<p class="p0 mr5 right mb3">
-<span class="smcap">Elsinore</span>, Cal., July 6, 1892.
-</p>
-
-<div class="transnote">
-<p class="ph">Transcriber’s Note</p>
-
-
-<p>The following changes were made to the text as printed:</p>
-
-<p>Page 3: “rings of agueous vapor” changed to “rings of aqueous vapor”</p>
-
-<p>“decent at the poles” changed to “descent at the poles”</p>
-
-<p>5: “the same No matter” changed to “the same. No matter”</p>
-
-<p>6: “Kelper’s “Third Law”” changed to “Kepler’s “Third Law””</p>
-
-<p>7: “FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE RECORD” changed to “FURTHER EXAMINATION
-OF THE RECORD.”</p>
-
-<p>“silicious Archæan beds” changed to “silicious Archaean beds”</p>
-
-<p>“Archæan metaliferous deposits” changed to “Archaean metalliferous
-deposits”</p>
-
-<p>8: “God made the firmmanent” changed to “God made the firmament”</p>
-
-<p>“under the firmmament” changed to “under the firmament”</p>
-
-<p>“above the firmmament” changed to “above the firmament”</p>
-
-<p>“The earths surface” changed to “The earth’s surface”</p>
-
-<p>“the suns direct rays” changed to “the sun’s direct rays”</p>
-
-<p>“overcanopyed by annular waters” changed to “overcanopied by annular
-waters”</p>
-
-<p>9: “THE NOCHIAN DELUGE” changed to “THE NOACHIAN DELUGE”</p>
-
-<p>“Aryan, Phonecian, Greek” changed to “Aryan, Phoenecian, Greek”</p>
-
-<p>“Greeks, Cythians and Celtic tribes” changed to “Greeks, Scythians and
-Celtic tribes”</p>
-
-<p>“among the Peruvians’ and Mexicans” changed to “among the Peruvians and
-Mexicans”</p>
-
-<p>“the ruins of Ninevah” changed to “the ruins of Nineveh”</p>
-
-<p>11: “fresh water shells are found” changed to “fresh-water shells are
-found”</p>
-
-<p>“decent of Annular vapors” changed to “descent of Annular vapors”</p>
-
-<p>12: “soon as killed purification” changed to “soon as killed,
-putrification”</p>
-
-<p>“the downrush of snows” changed to “the down-rush of snows”</p>“the downrush of snows from the earths” changed to “the down-rush of
-snows from the earth’s”
-
-<p>“a semitropical world” changed to “a semi-tropical world”</p>
-
-<p>“over-canopying fund of vapors” changed to “overcanopying fund of
-vapors”</p>
-
-<p>“posessed more bouyant power” changed to “possessed more buoyant power”</p>
-
-
-<p>“doubtless, dropped from icebergs” changed to “doubtless dropped from
-icebergs”</p>
-
-<p>“upon the earth The great” changed to “upon the earth. The great”</p>
-
-<p>“boulder and conglomerate rocks” changed to “bowlder and conglomerate
-rocks”</p>
-
-<p>13: “the disolving of glaciers” changed to “the dissolving of glaciers”</p>
-
-<p>“decended to the body” changed to “descended to the body”</p>
-
-<p>“primordal life-forms” changed to “primordial life-forms”</p>
-
-<p>“unknow depths of space” changed to “unknown depths of space”</p>
-
-<p>14: “Gardner of Nature” changed to “Gardener of Nature”</p>
-
-<p>“Carboniferous carbonacious matter” changed to “Carboniferous
-carbonaceous matter”</p>
-
-<p>“down fall of a silicious ring” changed to “downfall of a silicious ring.”</p>
-
-<p>17: “fibres runnning vertically” changed to “fibres running vertically”</p>
-
-<p>“ferns, sigillaria lepidodendra” changed to “ferns, sigillaria,
-lepidodendra”</p>
-
-<p>18: “seperated by layers of clay” changed to “separated by layers of
-clay”</p>
-
-<p>21: “cannel-coal inseperably joined” changed to “cannel-coal
-inseparably joined”</p>
-
-<p>“submerged beneath <em>fresh water</em>” changed to “submerged beneath
-<em>fresh-water</em>”</p>
-
-<p>22: “great super-ariel fund” changed to “great super-aerial fund”</p>
-
-<p>“isolated fresh water ocean” changed to “isolated fresh-water ocean”</p>
-
-<p>“New Foundland to Ireland” changed to “Newfoundland to Ireland”</p>
-
-<p>“wide expanse of fresh waters” changed to “wide expanse of
-fresh-waters”</p>
-
-<p>23: “antideluvians and their environment” changed to “antedeluvians
-and their environment”</p>
-
-<p>“inhospital and uninhabited” changed to “inhospitable and
-uninhabited”</p>
-
-<p>“glacitation of polar worlds” changed to “glaciation of polar worlds”</p>
-
-<p>“constantly dimishing” changed to “constantly diminishing”</p>
-
-<p>“upon the race his environment” changed to “upon the race; his
-environment”</p>
-
-<p>24: “natures eternal order” changed to “nature’s eternal order”</p>
-</div>
-
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