phenomena, the eruption of fiery fluid masses of stone bursting through certain parts of the earth’s crust. All these phenomena lead us with great certainty to the important assumption that the firm crust of the earth forms only quite a small fraction, not nearly the one-thousandth part of the whole diameter of the terrestrial globe, and that the rest is still for the most part in a molten or fiery fluid state. Now if, starting with this assumption, we reflect on the ancient history of the development of the globe, we are logically carried back a step further, namely, to the assumption that at an earlier date the whole earth was a fiery fluid body, and that the formation of a thin, stiffened crust on the surface was only a later process. Only gradually, by radiating its intrinsic heat into the cold space of the universe, has the surface of the glowing ball become condensed into a thin crust. That the temperature of the earth in remote times was much higher than it is now, is proved by many phenomena. Among other things, this is rendered probable by the equal distribution of organisms in remote times of the earth’s history. While at present, as is well known, the different populations of animals and plants correspond to the different zones of the earth and their appropriate temperature, in earlier times this was distinctly not the case. We see from the distribution of fossils in the remoter ages, that it was only at a very late date, in fact, at a comparatively recent period of the organic history of the earth (at the beginning of the so-called cænolithic or tertiary period), that a separation of zones and of the corresponding organic populations occurred. During the immensely long primary and secondary periods, tropical plants, which require a very high degree of temperature, lived not only in the present torrid zone, under the equator, but also in the present temperate and frigid zones. Many other phenomena also demonstrate a gradual decrease of the temperature of the globe as a whole, and especially a late and gradual cooling of the earth’s crust about the poles. Bronn, in his excellent “Investigations of the Laws of Development of the Organic World,” has collected numerous geological and palæontological proofs of this fact.