but a part of the
overflowings of the great atmospheric reservoir. "God binds up the
waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them." It
is thus that the terrestrial waters are divided into those above and
those below that expanse of clear air in which we live and move,
exempt from the dense, dark mists of the earth's earlier state, yet
enjoying the benefits of the cloudy curtain that veils the burning
sun, and of the cloudy reservoirs that drop down rain to nourish every
green thing.

We have no reason to suppose that the laws which regulate mixtures of
gases and vapors did not prevail in the period in question. It is
probable that these laws are as old as the creation of matter; but the
condition of our earth up to the second day must have been such as
prevented them from operating as at present. Such a condition might
possibly be the result of an excessive evaporation occasioned by
internal heat. The interior of the earth still remains in a heated
state, and includes large subterranean reservoirs of melted rock, as
is proved by the increase of temperature in deep mines and borings,
and by the widely extended phenomena of hot springs and volcanic
action. At the period in question the internal temperature of the
earth was probably vastly greater than at present, and perhaps the
whole interior of the globe may have been in a state of igneous
fluidity. At the same time the external solid crust may have been
thin, and it was not fractured and thickened in places by the upheaval
of mountain chains or the deposition of great and unequal sheets of
sediment; for, as I may again remind the reader, the primitive chaos
did not consist of a confused accumulation of rocky masses, but the
earth's crust must then have been more smooth and unbroken than at any
subsequent period. This being the internal condition of the earth, it
is quite conceivable, without any violation of the existing laws of
nature, that the waters of the ocean, warmed by internal heat, may
have sent up a sufficient quantity of vapor to keep the lower strata
of air in a constant state of saturation, and to occasion an equally
constant precipitation of moisture from the colder strata above. This
would merely be the universal operation of a cause similar to that
which now produces fogs at the northern limit of the Atlantic Gulf
Stream, and in other localities where currents of warm water flow
under or near to cooler air. Such a state of things is