CHAPTER I

Summary

The change produced in the civilized world within a few years, by the application of the powers of nature to locomotion, is so astonishing, that it leads to a consideration of the influence of man on the material world, his relation with regard to animate and inanimate beings, and the causes which have had the greatest effect on the physical, moral, and intellectual condition of the human race.

The former state of our terrestrial habitation, the successive convulsions which have ultimately led to its present geographical arrangement, and to the actual distribution of land and water, so powerfully influential on the destinies of mankind, are circumstances of primary importance.

The position of the earth with regard to the sun, its connexion with the bodies of the solar system, together with its size and form, have been noticed by the author elsewhere. It was there shown that our globe forms but an atom in the immensity of space, utterly invisible from the nearest fixed star, and scarcely a telescopic object to the remote planets of our own system. The increase of temperature with the depth below the surface of the earth, and the tremendous desolation hurled over wide regions by numerous fire-breathing mountains, show that man is removed but a few miles from immense lakes or seas of liquid fire. of temperature.