Newton ascertained by his investigations of the properties and principles of matter, the earth to be a globe flattened at the poles: and the French philosophers afterwards confirmed this fact by measuring a degree in different latitudes. This difference between the equatorial and polar diameters of the earth, and of the other planets which are also known to be of that shape, is ascribed by those philosophers who attempt to account for such a formation, to the projectile force of the globe at the equator occasioned by its rotary motion. This is admitting that the matter of our globe was once in so soft a state as to take its form from motion; for were the earth a compact solid body, and four times as hard as hammered iron at the centre, (as the Newtonian system alleges) this rotary motion round an imaginary axis could never give to the globe the form of an oblate spheroid, as is ascertained to be the fact; because a hard solid body moving in empty space, could not be supposed to yield into that shape by any law of action as yet unfolded by science. But were the matter of this globe thrown into a confused, disorganized state, and then put into a quick rotary motion, such as it is known to have, it would throw off from the centre towards the surface, first the heaviest, and next the lighter substances, which is the very order in which they are found to be arranged, in the composition of the earth. This principle, for it is simply the principle of projectile force, will account for mountains, hills, vallies, plains; and for nearly all the inequalities on the face of the earth. These circumstances depend on the density of substances composing the earth. Substances of the greatest specific gravity are susceptible of the greatest projectile force; and hence we find that mountains are composed of heavy masses of rock, mineral substances, and heavy earths; hills, or the next highest eminences, of earth of the next specific gravity; and plains, or level lands, of lighter substances. Had the earth originally been composed of one uniform substance, sand, for example, of equal fineness and weight, the whole surface of the globe would have presented one uniform level or unbroken plain. But, presuming that it was originally composed of, at least, earths of different densities, the heaviest masses would be first thrown out and raise their heads above the surface of the ocean: thus islands would be formed; and clusters of islands would form continents, rearing their lofty heads into the air; and, if the substances of which they were originally composed, were not as hard as the rocks which we now find on them, the sun and changing temperature of the climates, might convert certain kinds of earth into masses of stone, increasing in specific gravity by petrifaction, and other causes, until the towering peaks of the Alps and Andes assumed their present solid form. One continent having thus emerged, another