of an egg, by penetrating one hundredth part of its shell. But we see,
that if one drop of water be united with another, they form one large
drop, as spherical as either of the two which composed it: and on the
separation of the moon from the earth, if they were composed of mingled
solids and fluids, or if the solid parts rested on fluid, both the
fragment and the remaining earth would assume the same globular appearance
they now present.

"On this subject, however, I give no opinion. I only say, that it is not
contradicted by the facts you have mentioned. The fluid and the solid
parts settling down into a new sphere, might still retain nearly their
former proportion: or, if the fragment took away a greater proportion
of solid than of fluid, then the waters retiring to fill up the cavity,
would leave parts bare which they had formerly covered. There are some
facts which give a colour to this supposition; for most of the high
mountains of the earth afford evidence of former submersion; and those
which are the highest, the Himalah, are situated in the country to which
the origin of civilization, and even the human species itself, may be
traced. The moon too, we know, has much less water than the earth: and
all those appearances of violence, which have so puzzled cosmogonists,
the topsy-turvy position in which vegetable substances are occasionally
found beneath the soil on which they grew, and the clear manifestations
of the action of water, in the formation of strata, in the undulating
forms it has left, and in the correspondent salient and retiring angles
of mountains and opposite coasts, were all caused by the disruption;
and as the moon has a smaller proportion of water than the earth, she
has also the highest mountains."

"But, father," said I, "the diameter of the earth being but four times
as large as that of the moon, how can the violent separation of so large