tions of their
elements), and which takes up most of the whole globe and almost fills it
internally, and by itself almost suffices to endow it with sphaerick shape.
For the seas only fill certain not very deep or profound hollows, since
they rarely go down to a depth of a mile and generally do not exceed a
hundred or 50 fathoms. For so it is ascertained by the observations of
seamen when by the plumb-line and sinker its abysms are explored with the
nautical sounder; which depths relatively to the dimensions of the globe,
do not much deform its globular shape. Small then appears to be that
portion of the real earth that ever emerges to be seen by man, or is turned
up; since we cannot penetrate deeper into its bowels, further than the
wreckage of its outer efflorescence, either by reason of the waters which
gush up in deep workings, as through veins, or for want of a wholesome air
to support life in the miners, or on account of the vast cost that would be
incurred in pumping out such huge workings[103], and many other
difficulties; so that to have gone down to a depth of four hundred, or
(which is of rarest occurrence) of five hundred fathoms[104] as in a few
mines, appears to all a stupendous undertaking. But it is easy to
understand how minute, how almost negligibly small a portion that 500
fathoms is of the earth's diameter, which is 6,872 miles. It is then parts
only of the earth's circumference and of its prominences that are perceived
by us with our senses; and these in all regions appear to us to be either
loamy, or clayey, or sandy, or full of various soils, or marls: or lots of
stones or gravel meet us, or beds of salt, or a metallick lode, and metals
in abundance. In the sea and in deep waters, however, either reefs, and
huge boulders, or smaller stones, or sands, or mud {41} are found by
mariners as they sound the depths. Nowhere does the Aristotelian element of
_earth_ come to light; and the Peripateticks are the sport of their own
vain dreams about elements. Yet the lower bulk of the earth and the inward
parts of the globe consist of such bodies; for they could not have existed,
unless they had been related to and exposed to the air and water, and to
the light and influences of the heavenly bodies, in like manner as they are
generated, and pass into many dissimilar forms of things, and are changed
by a perpetual law of succession. Yet the interior parts imitate them, and
betake themselves to their own source, on