Volume II Part 21 (1/2)

_Queries and Conjectures relating to Magnetism and the Theory of the Earth_--Read in the American Philosophical Society January 15, 1790

I received your favours by Messrs Gore, Hilliard, and Lee, hose conversation I was much pleased, and wished for more of it; but their stay with us was too short Whenever you recoe me

I want to knohether your Philosophical Society received the second volume of our Transactions I sent it, but never heard of its arriving

If itits books the French work _Sur les Arts et les Metiers_? It is voluminous, well executed, and may be useful in our country I have bequeathed it them in my will; but if they have it already, I will substitute so else

Our ancient correspondence used to have so philosophical in it

As you are now free from public cares, and I expect to be so in a few months, why retted friend Winthrop once ame for philosophers, let me try if I can start a little for you

Has the question, how canetism, ever been considered?

Is it likely that _iron ore_ ilobe was at first forradual production of tinetical, in virtue of the es pass before it had netic polarity?

Since iron oreplaced in certain circumstances, may obtain it from an external cause, is it not possible that the earth received its netic power exist throughout our systeh all systeions, a conetis the diurnal revolution of a planet more steady to the saed by the presence of strongerof solobe of ours, have been a ing its surface, placing in different regions the effect of centrifugal force, so as to raise the waters of the sea in some, while they were depressed in others?

Let netism, but, however, to the theory of the earth

Is not the finding of great quantities of shells and bones of animals (natural to hot climates) in the cold ones of our present world, soed? Is not the supposition that the poles have been changed, the easiest way of accounting for the deluge, by getting rid of the old difficulty how to dispose of its waters after it was over! Since, if the poles were again to be changed, and placed in the present equator, the sea would fall there about fifteen ions; and the effect would be proportionable if the new poles were placed anywhere between the present and the equator

Does not the apparent wreck of the surface of this globe, thrown up into long ridges of mountains, with strata in various positions, make it probable that its internal mass is a fluid, but a fluid so dense as to float the heaviest of our substances? Do we know the lirow denser _within_ the surface in the same proportion nearly as it does _without_, at what depth old?

Can we easily conceive how the strata of the earth could have been so deranged, if it had not been a mere shell supported by a heavier fluid?

Would not such a supposed internal fluid globe be ie in the situation of the earth's axis, alter its form, and thereby burst the shell and throw up parts of it above the rest? As if ould alter the position of the fluid contained in the shell of an egg, and place its longest diameter where the shortest now is, the shell must break; but would be much harder to break if the whole internal substance were as solid and as hard as the shell

Might not a wave, by any means raised in this supposed internal ocean of extreree as it passes, the present shell of incumbent earth, and break it in soress of such wave, and the disorders it occasions a sound being first heard at a distance, aug away as it proceeds? A circumstance observed by the inhabitants of South A fro traced by inquiry quite down to Buenos Ayres, proceeded regularly froues per enious Peruvian who_

ON THE NATURE OF SEACOAL

I aetable origin, and that it has been for convulsions of nature had served to bring it very deep in many places, and covered it with many different strata, we are indebted to subsequent convulsions for having brought within our view the extremities of its veins, so as to lead us to penetrate the earth in search of it I visited last sue coal the vein, and descending by degrees towards the sea, I penetrated below the ocean where the level of its surface was ht hundred fathoms above my head, and the miners assured me that their works extended soradually descending under the sea The slate, which forms the roof of this coalures of leaves and branches of fern, which undoubtedly grew at the surface when the slate was in the state of sand on the banks of the sea

Thus it appears that this vein of coal has suffered a prodigious settlement

B FRANKLIN

CAUSES OF EARTHQUAKES

The late earthquake felt here, and probably in all the neighbouring provinces, having made many people desirous to knohat may be the natural cause of such violent concussions, we shall endeavour to gratify their curiosity by giving them the various opinions of the learned on that head

Here naturalists are divided Some ascribe them to water, others to fire, and others to air, and all of them with some appearance of reason