Rotation of the Earth invariable—Decrease in the Earth’s mean Temperature—Earth originally in a state of Fusion—Length of Day constant—Decrease of Temperature ascribed by Sir John Herschel to the variation in the Excentricity of the Terrestrial Orbit—Difference in the Temperature of the two Hemispheres erroneously ascribed to the Excess in the Length of Spring and Summer in the Southern Hemisphere; attributed by Sir Charles Lyell to the Operation of existing Causes—Three principal Axes of Rotation—Position of the Axis of Rotation on the Surface of the Earth invariable—Ocean not sufficient to restore the Equilibrium of the Earth if deranged—Its Density and mean Depth—Internal Structure of the Earth.

The rotation of the earth, which determines the length of the day, may be regarded as one of the most important elements in the system of the world. It serves as a measure of time, and forms the standard of comparison for the revolutions of the celestial bodies, which, by their proportional increase or decrease, would soon disclose any changes it might sustain. Theory and observation concur in proving that, among the innumerable vicissitudes which prevail throughout creation, the period of the earth’s diurnal rotation is immutable. The water of rivers, falling from a higher to a lower level, carries with it the velocity due to its revolution with the earth at a greater distance from the centre; it will therefore accelerate, although to an almost infinitesimal extent, the earth’s daily rotation. The sum of all these increments of velocity, arising from the descent of all the rivers on the earth’s surface, would in time become perceptible, did not nature, by the process of evaporation, raise the waters back to their sources, and thus, by again removing matter to a greater distance from the centre, destroy the velocity generated by its previous approach; so that the descent of rivers does not affect the earth’s rotation. Enormous masses projected by volcanoes from the equator to the poles, and the contrary, would indeed affect it, but there is no evidence of such convulsions. The disturbing action of the moon and planets, which has so powerful an effect on the revolution of the earth, in no way influences its rotation. The constant friction of the trade winds on the mountains and continents between the tropics does not impede its velocity, which theory even proves to be the same as if the sea, together with the earth, formed one solid mass. But, although these circumstances be insufficient, a variation in the mean temperature would certainly occasion a corresponding change in the velocity of rotation. In the science of dynamics it is a principle in a system of bodies or of particles revolving about a fixed centre, that the momentum or sum of the products of the mass of each into its angular velocity and distance from the centre is a constant quantity, if the system be not deranged by a foreign cause. Now, since the number of particles in the system is the same whatever its temperature may be, when their distances from the centre are diminished, their angular velocity must be increased, in order that the preceding quantity may still remain constant. It follows, then, that, as the primitive momentum of rotation with which the earth was projected into space must necessarily remain the same, the smallest decrease in heat, by contracting the terrestrial spheroid, would accelerate its rotation, and consequently diminish the length of the day. Notwithstanding the constant accession of heat from the sun’s rays, geologists have been induced to believe, from the fossil remains, that the mean temperature of the globe is decreasing.

The high temperature of mines, hot springs, and above all the internal fires which have produced, and do still occasion, such devastation on our planet, indicate an augmentation of heat towards its centre. The increase of density corresponding to the depth and the form of the spheroid, being what theory assigns to a fluid mass in rotation, concurs to induce the idea that the temperature of the earth was originally so high as to reduce all the substances of which it is composed to a state of fusion or of vapour, and that in the course of ages it has cooled down to its present state; that it is still becoming colder; and that it will continue to do so till the whole mass arrives at the temperature of the medium in which it is placed, or rather at a state of equilibrium between this temperature, the cooling power of its own radiation, and the heating effect of the sun’s rays.

Previous to the formation of ice at the poles, the ancient lands of northern latitudes might, no doubt, have been capable of producing those tropical plants preserved in the coal-measures, if indeed such plants could flourish without the intense light of a tropical sun. But, even if the decreasing temperature of the earth be sufficient to produce the observed effects, it must be extremely slow in its operation; for, in consequence of the rotation of the earth being a measure of the periods of the celestial motions, it has been proved that, if the length of the day had decreased by the three-thousandth part of a second since the observations of Hipparchus two thousand years ago, it would have diminished the secular equation of the moon by 44·4. It is, therefore, beyond a doubt that the mean temperature of the earth cannot have sensibly varied during that time. If, then, the appearances exhibited by the strata are really owing to a decrease of internal temperature, it either shows the immense periods requisite to produce geological changes, to which two thousand years are as nothing, or that the mean temperature of the earth had arrived at a state of equilibrium before these observations.

However strong the indications of the primitive fluidity of the earth, as there is no direct proof of it, the hypothesis can only be regarded as very probable. But one of the most profound philosophers and elegant writers of modern times has found in the secular variation of the excentricity of the terrestrial orbit an evident cause of decreasing temperature. That accomplished author, in pointing out the mutual dependencies of phenomena, says, “It is evident that the mean temperature of the whole surface of the globe, in so far as it is maintained by the action of the sun at a higher degree than it would have were the sun extinguished, must depend on the mean quantity of the sun’s rays which it receives, or—which comes to the same thing—on the total quantity received in a given invariable time; and, the length of the year being unchangeable in all the fluctuations of the planetary system, it follows that the total amount of solar radiation will determine, cÆteris paribus, the general climate of the earth. Now, it is not difficult to show that this amount is inversely proportional to the minor axis of the ellipse described by the earth about the sun (N.143), regarded as slowly variable; and that, therefore, the major axis remaining, as we know it to be, constant, and the orbit being actually in a state of approach to a circle, and consequently the minor axis being on the increase, the mean annual amount of solar radiation received by the whole earth must be actually on the decrease. We have, therefore, an evident real cause to account for the phenomenon.” The limits of the variation in the excentricity of the earth’s orbit are unknown. But, if its ellipticity has ever been as great as that of the orbit of Mercury or Pallas, the mean temperature of the earth must have been sensibly higher than it is at present. Whether it was great enough to render our northern climates fit for the production of tropical plants, and for the residence of the elephant and other animals now inhabitants of the torrid zone, it is impossible to say.

Of the decrease in temperature of the northern hemisphere there is abundant evidence in the fossil plants discovered in very high latitudes, which could only have existed in a tropical climate, and which must have grown near the spot where they are found, from the delicacy of their structure and the perfect state of their preservation. This change of temperature has been erroneously ascribed to an excess in the duration of spring and summer in the northern hemisphere, in consequence of the excentricity of the solar ellipse. The length of the seasons varies with the position of the perihelion (N.64) of the earth’s orbit for two reasons. On account of the excentricity, small as it is, any line passing through the centre of the sun divides the terrestrial ellipse into two unequal parts, and by the laws of elliptical motion the earth moves through these two portions with unequal velocities. The perihelion always lies in the smaller portion, and there the earth’s motion is the most rapid. In the present position of the perihelion, spring and summer north of the equator exceed by about eight days the duration of the same seasons south of it. And 10,492 years ago the southern hemisphere enjoyed the advantage we now possess from the secular variation of the perihelion. Yet Sir John Herschel has shown that by this alternation neither hemisphere acquires any excess of light or heat above the other; for, although the earth is nearer to the sun while moving through that part of its orbit in which the perihelion lies than in the other part, and consequently receives a greater quantity of light and heat, yet as it moves faster it is exposed to the heat for a shorter time. In the other part of the orbit, on the contrary, the earth, being farther from the sun, receives fewer of his rays; but because its motion is slower, it is exposed to them for a longer time; and, as in both cases the quantity of heat and the angular velocity vary exactly in the same proportion, a perfect compensation takes place (N.144). So that the excentricity of the earth’s orbit has little or no effect on the temperature corresponding to the difference of the seasons.

Sir Charles Lyell, in his excellent works on Geology, refers the increased cold of the northern hemisphere to the operation of existing causes with more probability than most theories that have been advanced in solution of this difficult subject. The loftiest mountains would be represented by a grain of sand on a globe six feet in diameter, and the depth of the ocean by a scratch on its surface. Consequently the gradual elevation of a continent or chain of mountains above the surface of the ocean, or their depression below it, is no very great event compared with the magnitude of the earth, and the energy of its subterranean fires, if the same periods of time be admitted in the progress of geological as in astronomical phenomena, which the successive and various races of extinct beings show to have been immense. Climate is always more intense in the interior of continents than in islands or sea-coasts. An increase of land within the tropics would therefore augment the general heat, and an increase in the temperate and frigid zones would render the cold more severe. Now it appears that most of the European, North Asiatic, and North American continents and islands were raised from the deep after the coal-measures were formed in which the fossil tropical plants are found; and a variety of geological facts indicate the existence of an ancient and extensive archipelago throughout the greater part of the northern hemisphere. Sir Charles Lyell is therefore of opinion that the climate of these islands must have been sufficiently mild, in consequence of the surrounding ocean, to clothe them with tropical plants, and render them a fit abode for the huge animals whose fossil remains are so often found; that the arborescent ferns and the palms of these regions, carried by streams to the bottom of the ocean, were imbedded in the strata which were by degrees heaved up by the subterranean fires during a long succession of ages, till the greater part of the northern hemisphere became dry land as it now is, and that the consequence has been a continual decrease of temperature.

It is evident, from the marine shells found on the tops of the highest mountains and in almost every part of the globe, that immense continents have been elevated above the ocean which must have engulfed others. Such a catastrophe would be occasioned by a variation in the position of the axis of rotation on the surface of the earth; for the seas tending to a new equator would leave some portions of the globe and overwhelm others. Now, it is found by the laws of mechanics that in every body, be its form or density what it may, there are at least three axes at right angles to each other, round any one of which, if the solid begins to rotate, it will continue to revolve for ever, provided it be not disturbed by a foreign cause, but that the rotation about any other axis will only be for an instant, and consequently the poles or extremities of the instantaneous axis of rotation would perpetually change their position on the surface of the body. In an ellipsoid of revolution the polar diameter and every diameter in the plane of the equator are the only permanent axes of rotation (N.145). Hence, if the ellipsoid were to begin to revolve about any diameter between the pole and the equator, the motion would be so unstable that the axis of rotation and the position of the poles would change every instant. Therefore, as the earth does not differ much from this figure, if it did not turn round one of its principal axes, the position of the poles would change daily; the equator, which is 90° distant, would undergo corresponding variations; and the geographical latitudes of all places, being estimated from the equator, assumed to be fixed, would be perpetually changing. A displacement in the position of the poles of only two hundred miles would be sufficient to produce these effects, and would immediately be detected. But, as the latitudes are found to be invariable, it may be concluded that the terrestrial spheroid must have revolved about the same axis for ages. The earth and planets differ so little from ellipsoids of revolution, that in all probability any libration from one axis to another, produced by the primitive impulse which put them in motion, must have ceased soon after their creation from the friction of the fluids at their surface.

Theory also proves that neither nutation, precession, nor any of the disturbing forces that affect the system, have the smallest influence on the axis of rotation, which maintains a permanent position on the surface, if the earth be not disturbed in its rotation by a foreign cause, as the collision of a comet, which might have happened in the immensity of time. But, had that been the case, its effects would still have been perceptible in the variations of the geographical latitudes. If we suppose that such an event had taken place, and that the disturbance had been very great, equilibrium could then only have been restored with regard to a new axis of rotation by the rushing of the seas to the new equator, which they must have continued to do till the surface was everywhere perpendicular to the direction of gravity. But it is probable that such an accumulation of the waters would not be sufficient to restore equilibrium if the derangement had been great, for the mean density of the sea is only about a fifth part of the mean density of the earth, and the mean depth of the Pacific Ocean is supposed not to be more than four or five miles, whereas the equatorial diameter of the earth exceeds the polar diameter by about 26¹/₂ miles. Consequently the influence of the sea on the direction of gravity is very small. And, as it thus appears that a great change in the position of the axis is incompatible with the law of equilibrium, the geological phenomena in question must be ascribed to an internal cause. Indeed it is now demonstrated that the strata containing marine diluvia, which are in lofty situations, must have been formed at the bottom of the ocean, and afterwards upheaved by the action of subterraneous fires. Besides, it is clear, from the mensuration of the arcs of the meridian and the length of the seconds’ pendulum, as well as from the lunar theory, that the internal strata and also the external outline of the globe are elliptical, their centres being coincident and their axes identical with that of the surface—a state of things which, according to the distinguished author lately quoted, is incompatible with a subsequent accommodation of the surface to a new and different state of rotation from that which determined the original distribution of the component matter. Thus, amidst the mighty revolutions which have swept innumerable races of organized beings from the earth, which have elevated plains and buried mountains in the ocean, the rotation of the earth and the position of the axes on its surface have undergone but slight variations.

The strata of the terrestrial spheroid are not only concentric and elliptical, but the lunar inequalities show that they increase in density from the surface of the earth to its centre. This would certainly have happened if the earth had originally been fluid, for the denser parts must have subsided towards the centre as it approached a state of equilibrium. But the enormous pressure of the superincumbent mass is a sufficient cause for the phenomenon. Professor Leslie observes that air compressed into the fiftieth part of its volume has its elasticity fifty times augmented. If it continues to contract at that rate, it would, from its own incumbent weight, acquire the density of water at the depth of thirty-four miles. But water itself would have its density doubled at the depth of ninety-three miles, and would even attain the density of quicksilver at a depth of 362 miles. Descending therefore towards the centre through nearly 4000 miles, the condensation of ordinary substances would surpass the utmost powers of conception. Dr. Young says that steel would be compressed into one-fourth and stone into one-eighth of its bulk at the earth’s centre. However, we are yet ignorant of the laws of compression of solid bodies beyond a certain limit; from the experiments of Mr. Perkins they appear to be capable of a greater degree of compression than has generally been imagined.

But a density so extreme is not borne out by astronomical observation. It might seem to follow therefore that our planet must have a widely cavernous structure, and that we tread on a crust or shell whose thickness bears a very small proportion to the diameter of its sphere. Possibly, too, this great condensation at the central regions may be counterbalanced by the increased elasticity due to a very elevated temperature.