Indeed, some students of the moon (Fauth, etc.) believe
that it is an unchanging desert of ice, bombarded by the
projectiles of space.
An ingenious speculation as to the effect on the earth of this
dislodgment of 5,000,000,000 cubic miles of its substance is
worth noting. It supposes that the bed of the Pacific Ocean
represents the enormous gap torn in its side by the delivery of
the moon. At each side of this chasm the two continents, the Old
World and the New, would be left floating on their molten ocean;
and some have even seen a confirmation of this in the lines of
crustal weakness which we trace, by volcanoes and earthquakes, on
either side of the Pacific. Others, again, connect the shape of
our great masses of land, which generally run to a southern
point, with this early catastrophe. But these interesting
speculations have a very slender basis, and we will return to the
story of the development of the earth.
The last phase in preparation for the appearance of life would be
the formation of the ocean. On the lines of the generally
received nebular hypothesis this can easily be imagined, in broad
outline. The gases would form the outer shell of the forming
planet, since the heavier particles would travel inward.
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