The vapors gradually
condensed in diluvial rains, which fell as if they had leapt
from the necks of thousands of millions of seltzer water bottles.
This liquid, loaded with carbonic acid, rushed in torrents over
a deep soft soil, subject to sudden or slow alterations of
form, and maintained in its semi-fluid state as much by the heat
of the sun as by the fires of the interior mass. The internal
heat had not as yet been collected in the center of the globe.
The terrestrial crust, thin and incompletely hardened, allowed it
to spread through its pores. This caused a peculiar form of vegetation,
such as is probably produced on the surface of the inferior planets,
Venus or Mercury, which revolve nearer than our earth around
the radiant sun of our system.
The soil of the continents was covered with immense forests.
Carbonic acid, so suitable for the development of the vegetable
kingdom, abounded. The feet of these trees were drowned in a sort
of immense lagoon, kept continually full by currents of fresh
and salt waters. They eagerly assimilated to themselves the carbon
which they, little by little, extracted from the atmosphere,
as yet unfit for the function of life, and it may be said
that they were destined to store it, in the form of coal,
in the very bowels of the earth.
It was the earthquake period, caused by internal convulsions,
which suddenly modified the unsettled features of the
terrestrial surface.
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