The Earth Not Drying Up

A writer in the Sun controverts the theory that the earth is drying up. The following statement was recently published: Thure is abnmlant evidence that the amnunt of water on the surf ace of the earth has heen steadily diminishing for many thousands of years. There wa? a time when the Caspio n Sea communicated with the Black Sea, and when the Mediterranean oovered the greater part of the Desert of Sahara. How does the diminution of the area of those two seas prove a decrease of - i the quantity of water on the whol' earth? We know that the Zuyder Ze containing 1,365 iiquare miles, was of trifling extent prior to the nood of 1247. And any part of the Desert of Sahara lying below the sea level may yet become a sea by the bursting of the barriera of the ocean or the Mediterranean. And it is said that our own Salt Lake is increasing in size. üeologists teil us that at one period the whole earth was covered wit'i water. Tha tact that con tinenta of dry land now exista is proof that thero is less wal er on our globe now taan thcre was in Hs lnfncy. Do not geologists also teil us that there was once a continent in the Pacilic Ocean, now sunken 2,000 feet below the surf ace of the water V Do they not fetch up fossils from that depth, which lived and died ages ago near the surf ace? The rivera and smaller streams of our Atlantic Statea are visibly smaller' than they woie tweuty-five years oo. Yes, because the forests have been cut down and the land cultivated. It is not certain, I believe, that our rainfall is diminishing but it is certain that the freshets increase as the area of cultiuation enlarges. The removal of the forests and cultivation of the land are sufflcient to account for the partial drying of the streams in summer. Lake Champlain is but a widened river, and its outlet being at tidfi water in the St Lawrence, it is iiot strange that the stream should be fllling up. Our Hudson had an outlet ages ago beyond Sandy Hook, and if it was then navigable at all above the present harbor, the site of New York city must have been on a high bluff. Thelevelof thegrent lake is falling year by ear. Harbors are evorywhere growing shallower. The harbor of Toronto has grown shallow In spite of the fact that it has been dredged out so that the bottom rock has been reached. The growing Bhallowness of the Hadson is more ovident above Albauy than it 8 in the water región and like the outlet of Lake Ghamplain, which was once navigable by Indian canoes, the upper Hudson is now aLmost bare of water in manv places during the sutnmer. What is b6coining of our water? We must accept the theory that, like the water of the inoon, our water ia sinking into the earth's iaterior. What proof is there that there was everany water in the moon? Instead of being an old worn-out body, I maintain that the moon is an infant compared to the earth. It is a cold body, becauge it bas not grown big enough to get hot. All planets are growing. Millions of meteors fall to the earth every twenty-four hours. They strike the atmospheric cushion, ignite, and gently fall in dust or vapor. But the moon having no atmosphere, they dash against its crust with fearful velocity; and I suspect that what are supposed to be volcanic craters in the moon are only the marks of great meteors, melfring a portion of the surface in their fall. But whether this be so or not, these meteors must increa,se the size of the planets, and, as they grow, their internal heat increases by the pressure of gravity, until at last they become suns. ,