Excerpt from The Cooling Globe: Or the Mechanics of Geology The two memoirs herewith presented to scholars and thinkers, and intended to be permanent contributions to kwledge, were read before the Boston Society of Natural History: the first, at the meeting of Oct. 5, 1859; the last, at the meeting of Jan. 4, 1865. The geological proposition which I have attempted to demonstrate is, that the globe, when first giving birth to life and rudimentary forms, was much larger in all its diameters than w. When walking in darkness, we step timidly. When the sun rises, we tread boldly. No doubts w remain in my mind upon the important subject involved in the subsequent discussions. When led to, and while pursuing, researches which have ended in these disquisitions, the opinions of the ancients were unkwn to me. Geology, in its solid conceptions, however, is only of recent birth. It belongs to this century. It is still in infancy; and the indefatigable labor of the largest intellects will be long in bringing it to maturity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.