THE Vailan or Annular Theory
PREFACE
The theory advanced by Prof. I. N. Vail accounts for the formation of
the earth's crust, with its associated minerals, in the fact that it was once
surrounded by rings of agueous vapor, containing much of its present
solid matter, which fell as mighty deluges. The last of these rings des-
cended at the time of the Noachian deluge and caused that catastrophe,
which is so graphically described by Moses, and which tradition has sung
in the ears of every tribe of Adam's race. The formation of these rings
was caused by the intense heat, which drove to an immense distance every
substance which could be reduced to vapor, and where they formed as
annular bands or rings similar to those surrounding the planet Saturn at
the present time. After long ages the portion nearest the earth slowly
overcanopied the heavens, and owing to the lack of centrifugal force
began its decent at the poles.
This theory explains certain phenomena better than any other yet ad-
vanced by scientists. It accounts for the uplift of mountains ; the deposit
of coal and other minerals ; the glacial age ; the retardation of the moon,
and it alone explains much contained in the first eight chapters of Genesis.
Prof. Vail has published a volume of about 400 pages on this subject,
which for clearness of statement and logical conclusions has seldom been
equaled by previous writers on scientific subjects. He deals in convincing
facts which are destined to overturn many pre-conceived theories in the
science of geology.
My object in sending forth this pamphlet is to call the attention of in-
telligent readers to a theory which must engage the attention of scientists
in the future, and which will enable the geologist to make clear many
things which are now obscure. I respectfully ask for the following pages
a candid reading, and for further information on the subject refer the
reader to Prof. Vail's "Story of the Bocks", and to other works of the
gifted author, which are now passing through the press.
IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION
Jupiter's belts are doubtless aqueous vapor driven from that planet
by heat; similar in every respect, probably, to the primitive condition
of our globe. This vapor would not all fall at once on the cooling of
the earth, but the upper portion would continue to revolve for a long
period.
All geologists agree that the earth was once in an igneous fluid state,
and during that condition all of its waters and whatever else could be
vaporized and sublimed by heat, as the less refractory metals and min-
erals, were driven away from its surface. The foundation of the Annu-
lar System was the molten or igneous world. The vaporized water,
mineral and metallic elements repelled from it existed as a great va-
porized atmosphere that rotated with the earth.
If the earth then rotated once in twenty-four hours, so did the atmos-
phere. Proctor and some others claim that the earth then rotated in
three hours; if so, the atmosphere did the same No matter how long
or how short the period of the earth's rotation, the upper vapors ro-
tated with it. Then, when and how did these vapors and other materials
composing the atmosphere return to the earth? Geologists generally
have claimed that they fell at the close of the igneous period; but the
Annular Theory claims that they did not, and it undertakes to explain the
phenomena of the geologic ages and epochs upon this claim.
The most eminent scientists agree that the vapors were driven off at
least 200,000 miles from the earth, and many claim a distance of 240,-
000 miles. All of the carbon in the grand casement of aqueous rocks,
the vast oceans of oxygen now contained in the silicates, sulphates, car-
bonates and oxides of the crust, as well as the nitrogen and hydrogen
in numerous compounds enormously swelled its volume. But the Annu-
lar Theory will claim but 100,000 miles as the atmosphere and that the
earth rotated as now, once in twenty-four hours. At the equator it
revolves at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour, at which rate the peripher of the earth's primitive atmosphere would revolve more than 25,000
miles an' hour.
Now it is mathematically certain that a body in our atmosphere re-
volving at the rate of 17,500 miles an hour could not fall to the earth's
surface. By Kelper's "Third Law" we can readily demonstrate not only
that these vapors were thrown out into a ring system, but how far be-
yond the earth they reached, namely: "The squares of the periodic
times of revolving satellites are proportioned to the cubes of their
mean distances from the primary around which they move."
The vapors nearest the earth did not possess the energy of satellites,
consequently they fell ko the earth, as the latter's surface cooled, leaving
the more distant matter moving independently above it.
EVIDENCES OF THE GEOLOGIC RECORD.
When the earth was in a state of fiery fluidity, all of the water it
now contains was suspended at a great distance above it. Beside the
oceans which now cover three-fourths of the surface of the globe,
rocks and coals contain from ten per cent to one half water, all of
which was primarily held in suspension. The bosom of the earth is
continually absorbing water as is demonstrated by deep mines and
other excavations. Dana estimates that even if the crust of the earth
is but five miles thick that the oceans would be 400 feet deeper if
all of the earth's imbibed waters could be returned to them. But
the earth's crust is more likely to be 100 miles thick, and it has been im-
bibing these waters for millions of years if not millions of ages. This
would increase the oceans, to about 8000 feet deeper than now. Yet
oceans are much deeper today than they were in geologic times.
This great mass of vapor would rotate by centrifugal force at the
equator, but there being no such force at the poles it was there kept
from falling by heat-alone. If the earth had not rotated vapors would have occupied great heights; but centrifugal force aided by actual rotation they,
were driven much farther. These forces necessarily drove the vapors
over the equator. If, however, any vapors were left at the poles they
must have fallen when the earth cooled down.
At that age rolled the first born ocean around the globe. Clouds
formed, rain descended, and winds swept the earth. There was summer and winter, and day and night.
The centripetal force of the rings was gradually retarded by the influence of the moon, and the gravital force was increased until the rings spread over the earth or approached it. When the innermost ring gradually descended toward
the earth and came in contact with the air it was checked, and necessar-
ily spread out toward the poles. Gravital force is strongest in the polar regions. If the rings of Saturn and Jupiter could increase their motion they would rise to greater heights. If they could become slower they would sink toward the poles.
EVIDENCE FROM OTHER PLANETS.
We have never seen the actual face of Saturn, and the sun is never
visible to its inhabitants. It is a planet upon which there is probably
perpetual day. The belts are composed of the same kind of material as the super-crust of the earth silicious, calcareous and carbonaceous matter. They will in time
become a part of the planet's sedimentary formation.
When the inveterate fires of the sun shall have died out, forms of carbon and associated forms of aqueous and mineral matter will form an annular system around it.
A burning world must be a smoking world, and from its furnaces
must arise vast volumes of unconsumed carbon to mingle with sus-
pended vapors.
When Saturn's rings fall to the body of the planet its moons will
necessarily retire a little farther from it. Astronomers say that our
moon is gradually retiring from the earth. Then it must have had an
annular system which fell and caused the moon to recede.
FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE RECORD
The vapors contained silex, quartz and whatever else was vaporized
and suspended therein. After the atmosphere had cooled it deposited on the earth what it contained when heated. Much of the sedimentary
beds built upon the Laurentian and older rocks were simply precipitated
from the annular system.
Iron and sulphur existed in the upper ocean as metallic and mineral
salts. In the cooling process the heavier minerals and metals would
necessarily locate nearest the earth and be the first to fall. True they
were disseminated to a certain extent throughout the system.
Iron and other heavy metals formed beds in the sea bottom.
Iron from Iron Mountain, Mo., and Pilot Knob, also lead and cop-
per ores are in the Laurentian rocks. These rocks are aqueous or sedimentary. The annular matter fell but in small part in equatorial regions, but largely in temperate and frigid zones.
It is folly to suppose that all the matter of aqueous beds were depos-
ited from previous aqueous beds by denudation. How were subsequent
lime deposits made from silicious Archaean beds? Denudation has
taken place in all ages, and a fall and precipitation of exotic matter
telluric-cosmic matter aided in the work.
CONCLUSIONS REACHED
1. All terrestial waters were held in suspension.
2. This rotated as a part and parcel of the earth a primeval
atmosphere of great complexity of material.
3. This suspended matter gathered in the earth's equatorial heav-
ens, and on condensing contracted and segregated into rings which
revolved independently.
4. The waters on high fell in a succession of stupendous cataclysms.
5. The first ocean was impregnated with mineral and metallic salts.
6. It required a vast lapse of time for rings to fall. Each ring
continued to revolve as a belt about the earth with a decreasing velocity
as it spread toward the poles and overcanopied the earth.
7. The smoke or unconsumed carbon that arose from the earth,
darkened the upper vapors and formed bands or belts.
8. The moon retarded the rings, causing them to fall upon the earth,
and it then receded from our planet.
9. The Archaean metaliferous deposits are so located as to be inexplicable by the old theory of aqueous denudation.
10. The Silurian beds, and particularly the order of their occur-
rence utterly refutes the idea that they were derived from pre-existing beds.
DEMONSTRATED BY HISTORIC TESTIMONY.
In Gen. 1:7 God made the firmament and divided the waters
which were under the firmmament from the waters which were above
the firmament. According to the Hebrew the atmosphere became an
expanse between two bodies of waters, and of course the upper
stratum had to move round the earth. In Gen. 1 :3,4 light came in
and garnished the heavens before the sun was seen.
In the 10th. verse the waters on the earth were called seas, the water
above the earth was called the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon
them. "And God said, Let there be light," and light came upon the
deep.
In Gen 1: 14-19 the sun which existed for ages did not appear in
the heavens until after the sun brought forth grass, etc. Then it is
plain that some intercepting canopy cut off the direct rays of the sun.
The writer of Genesis did not say the sun and moon shone upon the
earth, but he does say the stars did this. According to the Vailan
theory this is true, but they shone in from polar regions.
The earths surface was not heated by the suns direct rays, but under
the overcanopying vapors it must have been warmed, and its temper-
ature equalized by transmitted and diffused solar heat.
CONCLUSIONS.
There was a greenhouse temperature all over the earth at this time.
Storms and tempests were unknown, as such phenomena are caused by
sun-power, sun-heat falling directly upon the earth. Rains were infre-
quent, if at all.
Man, in the day when solar activism was shorn of its strength,
must have experienced remarkable longevity, for upon solar energy
depends every form and phase of life on earth.
The day of rest referred to in Gen. 2:3 in which God ceased from
his labors was a windless, stormless, rainless, winterless age; for immed-
iately we are told that "God had not caused it to rain upon the
earth." The climate was warm for man dwelt naked upon the earth.
He was nurtured in a greenhouse world.
The rainbow comes into view after the deluge for the first time.
There could have been neither rain nor sunshine previously, just what
the Vailan theory claims. The wind came upon the earth after the
waters of the deluge had fallen, and not before.
It was after the deluge that God said, "While the earth remaineth
seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and
day and night shall not cease." The period before the flood was night-
less, and evening and morning were day; that is, they coalesced into one
period called day.
After the deluge the bow is given; man's longevity declines; the winds
come, and alternating seasons take place all pointing to the fact that
the antedeluvian world was over-canopyed by annular waters.
Every leaf of the geologic record declares that the world has been
deluged time and again, which this theory also claims to be true, and to
have taken place at the declension of each ring or stratum.
THE NOCHIAN DELUGE.
There is enough water now on the earth and in its rocky frame to
make an hundred terrific deluges, every one of which could drown the
world of living beings.
In early days man believed there was a great deep on high. The
sources of the deluge were "broken up," and never again can the world
be destroyed from that source. If the fountains of the deep were on
the earth or in the seas then they are not "broken up." If they were
in the clouds, they were not, for that source still exists. Then we must
believe that they came from beyond the clouds.
With the fountain of the great deep placed on high the veritable
waters above the firmament we can readily understand why the "win-
dows of heaven were opened," and why "all the fountains of the great
deep were broken up." The rainbow proclaims these facts around
the circuit of the earth.
How does it happen that the author of Genesis relates these facts
with such harmonious accord, with all the conditions which an Annular
arrangement of water necessitated, if the idea was not familiar to his
mind?
The presence of upper vapors entering the atmosphere on their way
to the earth by the way of the polar regions necessitated an atmosphere
of greater buoyancy and power, and this necessitated greater bodily
frame. Hence it is said: "There were giants in those days." There
were giants among animals as well as men.
LEGENDS OF THE DELUGE.
Such wide-spread desolation as is accredited to the deluge of Noah
must have made an indelible impression upon the human mind.
We would naturally look for references to it in Aryan, Phonecian,
Greek and Hebrew history. They were the guardians of civilization.
It is not difficult to co-link even the rudest form of the flood traditions
with the terrible visitation so graphically related by Moses. Its shadow
will never pass from the historic page.
Men may criticise and ridicule the narrative given by Moses, yet
the fact remains that a self-sustaining history is there; and the com-
bined sophistry of all time cannot shake it.
An account of that great catastrophe is found in the mythological
narratives and traditional history of nearly or quite every people and
tribe of Adam's race.
It is found among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Cythians and
Celtic tribes. It has been discovered among the Peruvians' and Mex-
icans; the aborigines of Cuba, of North America and the South Sea
Islands. Even the inhabitants of Alaska preserve a tradition of the
deluge; and all point unmistakably to the deluge of Noah.
Recent investigations in the ruins of Ninevah, Babylon and in ancient
cities of Egypt confirm it by tablets preserved as veritable books.
Tradition as she sits amidst the crumbling ages of the past sings it
in our ears, while the sound of a universal deluge has gone out through all the earth. It would require volumes to present these traditions
alone.
AUGMENTATION OF OCEANIC WATERS
Some portions of the earth are sinking while others are rising. The
millions of cubic feet of matter deposited daily in the oceans by rivers
would be sufficient to accomplish this. Every pound of matter thus
transferred, is an energy transferred. In the course of 1,000 years, 1,000
square miles of oceanic bottom would be covered to the depth of
240 feet.
This enormous pressure on the underlying rocks is so much trans-
ferred energy converted into mechanical heat. This must expand the rocks thus under increased pressure. If this sediment were not borne into the ocean
along the Atlantic coast and spread out over vast areas it would be
lined with mountains and volcanoes, as that of the Mediterranean sea;
but being spread out over an extensive floor it prevents their form-
ation by lateral pressure.
Volcanoes are located where sediments can accumulate, and are
doubtless the result of this accumulation. Sixty- five thousand feet of
steel blocks piled one upon another would cause sufficient heat to melt
the lower ones or reduce them to a plastic state. The lava that issues
from a volcano is the deep bed-rock fused by pressure produced by
lateral expansion. Accumulating sediments cause rock expansion in
some regions, and being removed from others, causes contraction.
Expansion elevates the earth's crust; contraction lowers it.
A downfall of water that would raise the ocean fifty feet above its present level would cause an expansion that no rocks could resist, and its lateral pressure must result in mountain making. The New England coast has been elevated in
comparatively recent times. The St. Lawrence is so new that it has
not yet swept its channel clean.
From Nova Scotia to Florida and around the whole boundary of the
Gulf of Mexico are the submerged shore-lines of a former continent.
Many miles oat the lead-line suddenly plunges from about 100 fath-
oms to from 200 to 1,500 fathoms. So around the British ' Isles, the
coast of Norway, and that of Northern Europe and Asia. South Amer-
ica, Africa and the Pacific present the same characteristics. The
course of a submerged continent has been traced in mid-ocean.
SUMMARY
The Vailan Theory is proved,
1. By mathematical reasoning and philosophic necessity.
2. By the mineral character and philosophical deposition of strata.
3. By analagous facts relating to other worlds, belted and ringed
under the reign of law.
4. By the action of the moon.
5. By the records of man whose ancient writings declare, and re-
declare, again and again, the truth of this claim. The first eight chap-
ters of Genesis alone afford proof sufficient if all else failed.
6. The waters on the earth them- selves declare the fact.
GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES
The first and most important ele- ment of the earth's crust is carbon.
Of the more than 60,000 feet of aqueous beds there are probably
none that it does not enter into as an important factor. It was first driven from the earth by intense heat. The burning world was a smoking world. The unconsumed carbon commingled with the Annular vapois in the form of black,
sooty, pitchy matter. This was deposited at the time of the deluge,
and the waters that stood in seas, lakes and ponds deposited it as a
layer of black, carbonaceous mud upon their bottoms. It may be
found in ten thousand lakes planted in the Drift deposits in North Amer-
ica and Northern Europe.
A black carbonaceous soil covers many Western States which were
once covered by a vast inland sea. This sea was bounded on the west
by the Rocky Mountains; south by the Ozark Mountains and the moun-
tains of Tennessee and Kentucky, and emptied its waters into Lake
Michigan.
This greal inland sea finally became a fresh-water body. The re-
mains of the mastodon, mammoth and other pachyderms of inter-
diluvian times, as well as fresh water shells are found. It made
for itself two great outlets, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence
rivers. This inland sea must have been elevated 700 or 800 feet above
the ocean, and was surrounded on all sides by walls, and covered an
area of at least 500,000 square miles. We must conclude that
some great down-rush of waters caused it to break its bounds in two
directions at the same time.
The fall of waters supplied the black, sooty carbon that settled to
the bottom of the sea, remaining but a few inches thick on the hills,
perhaps, but several feet in the valleys, and is the source of the
peat bogs.
GLACIAL EPOCHS
Previous to the glacial record there had closed a long period of
perpetual spring. The primitive elephant, and many of his congeners
and contemporaries, fed in luxurious forests and grassy plains toward
the north pole, which are now covered with glaciers grinding their
bones to dust. Northern regions which for untold ages had been cov-
ered with tropical vegetation, and animals of innumerable forms, began
to be invaded by glaciers which slowly made their way toward the
equator.
The only way glaciers are now formed is by vapors wafted over
them from adjacent lands warmed by solar heat; but they were not
formed that way during the glacial epochs, but by the declension of an-
nular vapors. Glacial ice cannot accumulate extensively now. It
flows, and cannot be heaped up largely, its rate of motion being pro-
portionate to the slope of its bed. The source of those sfctpws which
built a great continental ice cap over the northern hemisphere must
be attributed to the Annular System. They accumulated in the St. Law-
rence valley several thousand feet thick and towered over the New
England mountains.
Snow seldom falls in arctic regions now. Dr. Kane saw sledge
tracks that were made several years previously. How then did those
boundless reaches of snow and ice accumulate but by the decent of
Annular vapors?
Animals are found entombed in the frozen soil and snows under the
arctic circle. For many years a large trade has been carried on in
ivory, by Siberian traders, dug from the frozen soil. Many of the ani-
mals, as the mammoth, rhinoceros, etc., remain undecayed, and in their
stomachs and between their teeth are found the vegetation upon
which they fed. And even the capillary blood vessels still retaining
their contents, showing that there was not the slightest decomposition,
but that the catastrophe which overwhelmed them was sudden. The
climate was changed as by a stroke, which congealed and sealed the land
in ice, locking the mammoth and other animals therein.
Had those animals not been frozen soon as killed purification and de-
composition must have taken place. Nothing but the downrush of snows
from the earths Annular System could have done this. These re-
mains are dredged from the northern oceans, and they are also found
fossilized over large portions of Siberia; in both cases being doubtless,
dropped from icebergs. Tne mammoth is found frozen in a glacier;
the glacier was originally snow; the destruction must necessarily have
been sudden.
If not more than one tenth of the waters now upon the earth had fall-
en in the form of snow it would have covered the entire land surface
of the globe more than 30,000 feet deep; and as one tenth must have
fallen in polar regions it briugs out the Annular Theory as a competent
source. The sudden fall of snow sufficient to overwhelm a semitrop-
ical world could not accumulate in the atmosphere as it now does, and
fall therefrom. It must have come from a source beyond the atmos-
phere.
The over-canopying fund of vapors acted as a mighty robe to the earth, keeping out the cold of space, and equally distributing solar heat over
the globe and causing terrestial warmth. The animals were much larger than their representatives are now, showing that the atmosphere was heavier and posessed more bouyant power by the pressure of a vast ocean of vapors in the higher
regions.
The downfall of water caused continual upheavals, and mountain
making, which is proved by finding marine fossils along the seashore,
and elsewhere far above the ocean. Terraces of the Champlain epoch in
New England that must have been formed in the sea, are now found
elevated hundreds of feet.
All geologists agree that there have been many floods upon the
earth The great telluric glaciers of recent geologic times .were melted
under the tropic influence of the Annular vapors resulting in deluges.
Under the vast pressure of the accumulated waters the plastic
ocean bed goes down and forces its foundation under the continent by
lateral pressure, and causes upturned and crumpled strata in many places,
and also volcanic phenomena.
REVIEW OF THE GEOLOGIC RECORD.
The geologist has never yet found the base of the aqueous rocks, nor
can he know how deep their foundations extend. When the Laurentian stratified beds were formed there was an ocean on the earth. A portion of the tellurio-cosmic waters had fallen.
In the boulder and conglomerate rocks found in every age of geology
there is proof that glaciers invaded the earth after the declension of
each Annular stratum. The Annular matter extended in comparatively
narrow belts over the equator. As the lower stratum was attracted to-
ward the earth it gradually spread out toward the polar regions, caus-
ing a warm climate all over the earth, and melting the snows and
glaciers at the poles. This lasted untold ages until a tropic and semi-tropical vegetation spread over the earth. After its fall arctic cold invaded the north and south poles, pushing a vast ice cap toward the equator, which remained until
another stratum of annular vapors spread over the globe. These ages
of warmth and ages of cold continued to alternate until the fall of the
last ring of vapors, which took place at the time of the Noachian deluge,
causing that catastrophe.
The sudden destruction of life, at the end of each age in geology,
must have been caused by sudden cold. The waters reaching the
earth at the poles must cause refrigeration; must cause excessive
floods; must cause extermination of specific forms of life ; must cause new
distribution and condition of oceanic waters, and caused great folding
and crumpling of strata.
In the disolving of glaciers a vast pressure was lifted from the conti-
nents and transferred to the ocean beds, causing them to go down and
the land to be elevated.
SEED BED OF ORGANISMS
From the days of Homer until the present time we read of dust-storms
of living organisms falling upon the earth, and colored snow, the color-
ing matter being microscopic forms of life. The dust is doubtless of
cosmic origin. There must be micro-cosmic clouds moving in inter-planetary space, which meeting the earth in its path, are precipitated upon its surface.
We can scarcely conceive of matter anywhere without associating it
with living forms. The outermost vapors of the annular system, which
fell in the time of Noah, remained on high for unknown millions of
years, receiving constant additions of meteoric and cosmic dust from
without. As the gaseous envelope that now surrounds our earth con-
tains living organisms, we must believe" the annular matter did also,
and to a much greater degree.
If Jupiter's belted system had long ago decended to the body of
that planet, so that we could gaze upon the continents and seas as we
do those of Mars, we would conclude that they swarmed with life. An
incomplete world must contain incomplete or primordal life-forms;
forms that in time must develop. In yellow snow, dust showers, "blood
rains," etc. we have evidence that organic forms are natural accom-
paniments of the nebulous and elementary forms of matter.
Spider showers are well authenticated. Sometimes the air is filled
with their gossamer threads upon which they mount to unknow depths
of space, where they live. If spiders can live in the air, descend to the
earth and live there for a time, and toads can live for untold ages im-
mured in solid rock, they could live in belts of aqueous and mineral
matter. The manner in which organisms have succeeded each other
on the earth as revealed by the geologic records demands that the an-
nular system was the cradle of infant life, the propagating beds in which the life-germs were placed by the great Gardner of Nature.
It is as reasonable to suppose that germs took form in water under the
creative hand before they fell to the earth as afterward, and when we see
that each downfall brought new life-forms which exhibit no specific
or generic relation to previous I forms, we are forced to admit that
either the seed beds of the Annular; system provided the undeveloped
organisms, or there was a special creation at each period.
In the Silurian age there was an ocean containing heavy calcarious
matter; in the Devonian silicious and silicio-calcarious matter; in the
Carboniferous carbonacious matter, and each ocean had its character-
istic life-forms. But if all the waters fell at one time, how is it
possible for each age to have had an ocean containing characteristic
minerals? These characteristic minerals fell with each ring, which
marked the ages of geology, destroying previous life-forms and in-
troducing new ones. Eozoic rocks were laid down 40,000 feet thick.
Upon these were piled Silurian 65,000 feet thick; on these Devonian
rocks 15,000 feet, and then comes 17,000 feet of Carboniferous rocks,
each age having characteristic fossils and mineral deposits. As these
deposits were laid down by the sea, why do they so widely differ in their
composition if they all fell at the same time from above! The Pots-
dam sandstone underlies the Silurian rocks. It spread from the Can-
adas to Texas, from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains, and prob-
ably forms a casement around the globe. It is 8,000 feet thick, and
shows a mechanical and rapid accumulation, pointing unmistakably to
the down fall of a silicious ring.
The Annular theory admits of the universal eroding power of rivers
and waves; the transporting power of currents and strata building from
detrital matter. But waves can do nothing unless supplied with matter.
Where did they get the crystalline, granulated and infusorial matter to
spread over the floor of the Silurian ocean? Great beds of metals have
been laid down as regularity stratified deposits which could not have
been borne from Archaean terranes.
CARBON- STRATA DEPOSITED AS AN AQUEOUS SEDIMENT.
Carbon composing a peat bed is simply unconsumed carbon. The
carbon or smoke that arises from every chimney and furnace when
measurably shut up from immediate union with oxygen, remains an unburnt fuel precisely the same in kind as the unburnt carbon fuel of the peat bogs. Were we to collect the unburnt carbon from our chimneys in piles, where moisture and air could have free access, it would take fire spontaneously and burn, just as peat dug from the bog sometimes takes fire and burns.
The millions of fires from foundries, volcanoes, etc., are forming
fuel wherever soot is formed, and were it not for the ever active oxy-
gen of the air, it would all descend upon the earth as fuel and become
incorporated in forming sedimentary beds. This is our claim for the
coal, which as unconsumed carbon arose beyond the reach of destroy-
ing oxygen, from the heated, glowing furnace of our globe, and in
time returned to the earth.
When the plant dies and begins to decay one of its constituent el-
ements, carbon, oxydizes by slow combustion and returns to the air
as an invisible gas. It is but accidental when a particle fails to be-
come oxydized and remains as uncousumed carbon. An exceedingly
small part of vegetation remains unburnt.
Coal veins, which are from one foot to three hundred feet thick,
would make a stratum around the earth ten feet thick. Fifty pounds
of coal will yield 10,000 gallons of carbonic acid. Then calling eight
gallons equal to one cubic foot the astonishing fact comes out that the
coal beds actually draw from the atmosphere an ocean of carbonic
acid which would have covered the globe to the depth of 12,500 feet,
which would have destroyed all animal life. Even three or four per
cent, of carbonic acid in our present atmosphere would be fatal to an-
imal life. Hence it is clear that coal cannot be attributed to vegeta-
ble origin.
CONCLUSIONS REACHED
The following conclusions are clearly deducible:
1. The Annular system was a region of microscopic life and infu-
sorial forms. Coal being deposited by sea-water carried down with it
marine forms, and others settled upon its surface.
2. The carbon deposits must have borne down a vast amount of
marine vegetation and buried it upon the sea bottom. In swamp
marshes the vegetation would have been entirely different.
3. When a carbon fall was borne to the seas and settled where lime-
stone strata prevailed it would indicate great distance from the shore,
and here the roof shales of the coal must be necessarily free from
land fossils. Coal beds amongst sandstone strata indicate depositions
near shore, and may contain land fossils.
4. The coal beds must be more heavily developed toward polar re-
gions, and most free from impurities.
5. All carbon downfalls must have been attended by great cata-
clysms of snow, or water, or both.
6. A coal vein deposited near a volcano, or mechanical heat arising
therefrom would be metamorphosed into heavier and harder forms of
carbon. But as all grades must have existed in the Annular system
as primitive distillates, all of these forms may be found in lands where
no strata disturbance has taken place.
7. The heavy carbon, as the anthracite and semi-bituminous parti-
cles would be borne to the deep seas, while the lighter would float
into shallow water. Hence a submarine valley might have a deposit
of anthracite while a neighboring bed on an elevation might be bitu-
minous.
8. In both northern and southern hemispheres the coal must be
more valuable as we proceed from the equator.
9. There must have been carbon falls in all ages, and the first were
the purest and the best, while the last to descend must have been the
lightest and poorest, and must be found near the surface, or are the .
foundations of recent peat bogs.
Peat vegetation, or moss known by the generic name of Sphagnous,
has led many to believe it to be the origin of that product. But these
sphagnous mosses could never have planted themselves over the medial
and colder latitudes if the carbon beds necessary to sustain them had
not previously been planted there. If coal and peat are vegetable pro-
ducts they should exist in greater abundance in tropical regions; but
they are found in limited quantity there.
IS COAL A VEGETABLE PRODUCT?
The usually accepted theory concerning the origin of coal is that it
was formed from an ancient vegetation that grew largely in peat and
swamp marshes. This theory the Vailan system overthrows.
Every atom of the great mass of carbon now forming the coal deposits must have been a distilled product of a primitive igneous process before the plant could possibly appropriate it. Every intelligent chemist knows that the great tel-
luric gas furnace of primitive times was competent to produce all the
carbon now found in the crust of the earth. Soot, that sometimes
takes fire in our chimneys, is deposited in infinitesimal smoke par-
ticles. Hence, smoke from burning carbon is simply a fuel which makes
it evident that the smoke which arose from the igneous earth was a
fuel hydro-carbon." The dark belts of Saturn and Jupiter are doubtless
strata of carbon revolving about those planets.
If the Vailan theory is true the graphites and heavier forms of car-
bon were the first to fall upon the earth after the igneous period was
passed, and will be found in its first aqueous beds, and generally
unassociated with fossil vegetation.
This is precisely what we do find. Both Dana and Dtuvson bear testi-
mony to the fact that graphite is a very common mineral in the older
beds, and that the primitive carbon beds are equal in gravity to that of
similar areas in the carboniferous system.
Why no fossil plants in the earlier coal deposits? Because no plants
grew at that time. Then we must look for its origin elsewhere than in
plants. If coal be a vegetable product, so is graphite. To say that
animal organism aided in the process simply adds to the difficulty,
since it is carbon that makes the organism and not the organism the
carbon. But suppose fossil plants were found in graphite, would it be
any more evidence that they formed it than that they formed clay or
sandrock in which they are found? The simple fact that organic fossils
are found in carbon beds changed to carbon affords no evidence that
these organisms made the beds.
We find vegetable remains in coal seams just as we find them in any
other reck. A coal plant as a lepidodendron, may begin in the
lower clay, and pierce through a coal seam into the overhanging
shale and sandstone. In the first it is a clay fossil, in the second a car-
bonaceous fossil, and in the third a silicious fossil. The fact is the
trunk of a tree in an upright position in a coal bed, which is quite
common, proves that the coal formed around it rapidly. It would require
forty feet of vegetable debris to make five feet of carbon. Some
coal seams are 300 feet thick, which would require at least 2,400 feet of
vegetable growth in its formation, which is an impossibility. As a vegetable product coal would form very slowly, but from the Vailan system would require but a few hours, or days at most, to lay it down.
Plants found in coal burn with difficulty, which ought not to be
true if they contained a resinous sap, or bituminous matter. In many
instances you can find a dozen fossil plants in the overlying clay to
where you can find one in coal. They are clay fossils because they
are imbedded in clay, same as fossils in coal are carbon because im-
bedded in carbon.
If coal is compressed peat, as some would have us believe, why do we
not find fibres runnning vertically through it? You may examine peat
after a pressure of twenty tons to the square inch has been exerted,
and yet the vertical structure of the mass will be apparent. Since
we find abundance of rootlets running in all directions, vertically as
well as horizontally in the under clays of coal beds it is evident that
coal is not a metamorphosed peat.
Imagine an expanse of marshes 100,000 square miles in extent, cov-
ered with calamites, ferns, sigillaria lepidodendra remaining motionless
for countless centuries, and' then suddenly sinking beneath the waves
of the sea in order to receive a sear formed bed for a covering; and in the
universal burial to preserve but a few fossils, and they in a horizontal
position, while in the clays immediately above and below the coal beds
they are found in profusion; that in due time the vast area arose from
its baptism, and on the thin layer of clay millions of the same plants
grew until they formed another bed of coal, when it sinks again beneath the waves, and this oscillation continued until it had been buried
twenty, forty or one hundred times, and you have the old theory of how
coal was formed.
But if the old theory concerning the formation of coal is correct, how
did it occur that the earth in rising out of the ocean stopped each time
in the right place for swamp vegetation to accumulate? According
to the highest authority coal is not formed from sea-plants, for they
cannot emit any considerable amount of caloric, but it is the pro-
duct of land plants. Then why do we find coal scattered over a vast
area of sea bottom?
The structure of continents show that they have remained such from
their first formation. Some of the geologic formations, as the Carbon-
iferous-conglomerates, took place all over the earth at the same time.
How could this be except it came from the Annular system?
Were we to have a shower of carbon dust it would settle to the bot-
tom of the sea all over the irregularities of the same. Then sand beds
accumulating for ages would settle over it. These would form a greater
thickness in some places than in others; hence a succeeding fall of
carbon settling upon the ocean floor would not form a bed exactly par-
allel with the first. This is precisely what we find to be true in the car-
bon deposits. The distance in coal seams may vary from twenty feet in
one place to forty feet in another place in the same neighborhood,
which is the result of irregularity in the ocean floor.
Boulders are found in coal seams which means that coal beds have
been formed under water; and if a foreign bolder that the coal seam
was formed at the bottom of the ocean. Boulders have been found
in the middle of coal seams with glacial marks upon them, showing
that they have been dropped from icebergs into the forming coal beds
at the bottom of the sea. Foreign water worn boulders are frequently
found in coal beds.
Stratas of coal may be seperated by layers of clay not more than half
an inch in thickness; how could vegetation take root in so thin a layer
of clay sufficient to form the overlying coal seam of probably several
feet? Suppose a great carbon fund should float from the Arctic ocean
into Hudson Bay. It would settle upon an undulating bottomland if a
flood of muddy water from the surrounding rivers should empty into
the bay while the carbon bed was forming, a thin clay bed would be
the result. This might continue as long as the carbon was brought
from the Arctic regions.
The floating mass of primitive carbon clouds after they entered
the atmosphere and floated away for centuries, perhaps, toward the polar
regions in their efforts to reach the earth, became a tissue of evolving
vegetable organisms and vegetable forms. Take fresh soot from a fur-
nace soon as it is formed, subject it to hot vapors from boiling waters
and store it away in an open vessel of water, and you will soon see veg-
etable and animal organisms start into being. Then why not find or-
ganisms in revolving soot clouds in the Annular system?
Marine vegetation exists on the sea bottom, and a carbon sediment
rapidly accumulating would certain- ly involve it.
Under almost all the carbon veins lies a deposit of fire clay. Strange
that adjoining a highly combustible bed, a substance should be invari-
ably planted that is so refractory as to be used for crucibles in fusing
almost every known metal ! In this bed lies involved a prof-use marine
vegetation, and the preservation of its delicate lineaments proves that
it was suddenly involved. It is more generally present under coal
veins that are more distant from the tropics, and invariably in the most
distant ones. The fire clay-dust sublimed in the great telluric cruci-
ble arose to commingle with primitive vapors and returned with them.
When a carbon fall occurred the clay matter being of greater specific
gravity was the first to find its way to the ocean floor.
This fire clay is found under beds of primitive graphite where no veg-
etation is involved, and therefore cannot be a vegetable distillation.
It is found where glacial action is unknown, and cannot be mud pul-
verized by moving ice. Every one of the more than seventy coal seams
of the Nova Scotia regions has its characteristic clay-bed. When we
see trees standing in and surrounded by this clay we are forced to ad-
mit a rapid accumulation. Limestone is a deep sea formation and the Vaijan system demands that standing trees should not be
found in it. Only such limestone formation or strata as were deposit-
ed as mechanical precipitation could be formed in shallow waters, especi-
ally in regions" beyond the tropics. A limestone stratum deposited
among shore deposits or continental detritus points directly to Annular
origin and vegetable fossils will ocur in the upper clays. Here geol-
ogists have an opportunity to prove or disprove the Annular problem.
Coal and peat are not found in the tropics where they ought to be
found if vegetation produced them. And if they could be found there it
would sweep the Vailan system from its foundations. They are found,
however, just where this system says they must be found. Why is peat
found in the ocean, and in the thousands of lakes and ponds where
no peat vegetation is now growing? Suppose we find a peat bed forty
feet thick, it must have been at one time a lake with forty feet of water,
and how did the peat begin to grow? Peat forms slowly and the rains and
storms would have worked mud, etc., more rapidly into it than the
peat would have filled it. It would neither have grown from the top
nor from the bottom. The foundation carbon fell from the Annular
fund.
METAMORPH1SM OF CARBON BEDS.
When bituminous or lignitic coal, or even peat is subjected to a suffi-
cient degree of heat it is converted into hard coal and sometimes into
graphite. From this source some conclude that anthracite and all
hard coals are metamorphosed beds of soft carbon. But how about the
vast beds in aqueous crusts hundreds of miles from any igneous
agencies? All anthracite coal changed from bituminous coal will
contain a greater per cent, of ash than the coal from which it is de-
rived. If it does not it is evidence that it never was bituminous coal.
Let us suppose a heavy fall of Annular carbon in the north At-
chian mountains were again under the sea. The carbon carried by the
ocean currents southward would fall to the sea bottom in the more
quiet waters. The heavy or anthracite dust would reach the bottom in
deep waters where the lighter forms would not. Before the Appalachian
upheaval, the eastern base of the system was farther out in the sea,
and was in deeper waters than the western. The constitution of the
coal itself, the condition of the sea bottom (sloping from the coast to
the deep sea) point harmoniously to the annular origin of the carbon
beds. The bituminous dust not being able to directly settle with the
anthracite remained longer in suspension which accounts for its
greater amount of ash. The farther south it floated, the more impure
it became. The heaviest beds of anthracite will be found in the
northern part of the great plateau, and principally in British America
if the Vailan theory is true.
Fossil plants in coal are generally mineralized charcoal, and are diffi-
cult of combination. If the bed was composed of vegetable produc-
tion the same difficulty would certainly characterize the mass. Hence
the plant is simply a foreign body in a bed of mineral carbon. Coal
seams have become so hard as to be planed off by eroding forces directly
after being laid down, or before heavy beds had accumulated over
them. Thus they could not have
been formed by vegetable peat.
TERTIARY COALS.
Extensive coal beds in Asia are probably Tertiary, while the Vast carbon beds among the Rocky Mountains, and underlying the vast plain to the west of these mountains, were formed in the Tertiary
period. The Rocky Mountain plateau on which the coal beds are
planted existed as a sea bottom over which the waters from the Arctic
world rolled during the Tertiary period. The Rocky Mountain re-
gion was then sleeping in the sea.
The Tertiary beds reach from Mexico to the Arctic ocean, proving
that currents ran toward the equator along the valley of the McKenzie,
bearing into southern waters whatever fell from the upper world. It
is thus easy to see how the vast expanse of this western world became
the receptacle of Tertiary carbon. Finding no Tertiary coals on the
Eastern border of our continent we are led to believe that a narrow
continent stretched from America to Europe across the present bed of
the Atlantic and hindered the flow of carbon along the Atlantic sea-
board. It is now conceded by geologists that such an isthmus of land
reached from Newfoundland to the shores of Europe during the Ter-
tiary period. This being true a vast fund of carbon must lie at the
bottom of the North Atlantic.
If these later coals had been formed out of vegetation growing
in great continental swamps, the same opportunity was afforded by
the southern sea borders for this swamp vegetation. And so from
Long Island to the Rio Grande. Why then do we not find it
if coal is of vegetable origin ? If the vast fund of the lignitic coals
is a vegetable production it was present in the Tertiary atmosphere
as a deadly poison. But at that time both land and sea were full of
air-breathing mammals and monsters showing conclusively that it
was not there in such a condition.
DEDUCTIONS
1. The plant when subjected to a proper mode of distillation is made to yield carbon in various allotropic forms. So of any mineral that has carbon in its constitution. These forms of carbon were placed in the crust of the earth after the
primitive fires had died out.
2. All such primitive distillations existed in the atmosphere of the
incandescent earth.
3. This matter as it declined and mingled with the atmosphere in
after ages, changed from the ring to the belt form, and overcanopied the
earth and fell largely in regions outside the tropics.
4. The heavier forms of carbon fell largely in the earlier ages;
though all sections of the system must have had some of each form.
5. All ages were more or less characterized by carbon falls, and
no age could be exclusively carboniferous.
6. Carbon falling directly into the ocean would separate into heav-
ier and lighter forms and settle accordingly in higher or lower ele-
vations of sea bottom, thus explaining why different forms of coal are
found in the same proximate horizon.
7. The earliest or heavier forms are free from organic remains, and
must therefore be a primitive distillation. The other carbon beds by
their associated strata; by their involved vegetation and other organ-
isms; by accompanying clay partings; by involved glacial drift; by
latitudinal gradation in quantity of ash and specific gravity; by charac-
teristic absence from the tropics and the heavy deposits in higher lati-
tudes; by synchronous formation in all continents; by their evident for-
mation in the very lap and bosom of the glacier and in ice and flood;, by
the fact that they are bituminous, oily hydro-carbons, and by a mul-
titude of inconsistencies and impossibilities involved in the vegetation
theory, have been shown to be actual sedimentary deposits, and therefore
a primitive product.
Since then there is not a feature connected with the formation of coal
that is not readily explained by the primitive carbon theory; not one
that philosophic law does not resolve into harmony with Annular
declension without even the show of conflict; and since vegetarians are
forever stumbling upon inexplicable difficulties bowlders, pebbles, un-
dulations, slopes, ripple-marks, clay partings, cannel coal inseperably
joined with bituminous coal, anthracites with less amount of ash, marine
impurities, carbon planted in Archaean beds, air-bieathing animals
among Tertiary coals, carbon dredged from the ocean, dug from
the frozen world, and innumerable other objections over which they can
not climb, the vegetation theory can not be true.
ANNULAR DOWNFALL IN THE TERTIARY OCEAN OF THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE.
If the Vadlian theory claims are valid the beds in the Rocky Moun-
tain Tertiary must present the following features: The Cretaceous
period having been brought to a close by a down-rush of waters and
snows in the northern hemisphere, a stream of water pouring south-
ward must to a great extent have been a fresh-water current, and those deposits in the extreme northern beds of the Rocky Mountain region must be largely fresh-water accumulations. Those in the middle of this region must be to a less
extent fresh-water; perhaps sometimes fresh and again marine, ow-
ing to changes in currents, etc., and the two be commingled, while in
the southern part the beds must be almost exclusively marine. For-
tunately for the Vailian theory these demands are fully met. The waters
of this vast region communicated with the Arctic ocean, probably by
way of the present depression in British America, along the valley of
the McKenzie river, while south it communicated with the Gulf of Mexico.
Rere was a sea forty times larger than Lake Erie. Where did the
water come from that made the northern part fresh, the middle part
brackish and the southern portion marine? The Tertiary of the Pacific
Coast is marine; so is a larger portion of the Atlantic border. Doubt-
less Davis Strait poured a volume of fresh-water from the polar world
into the Atlantic, for there is the same commingling of marine and
fresh-water shells on the northeast coast, while in the northern part
they are exclusively fresh-water species. Rivers could not have
done this, for all the rivers from Delaware Bay around the coast of
the Gulf of Mexico were not sufficient to lay down fresh- water Terti-
ary. Admit that the vast polar ocean of the Tertiary period was a
body of fresh-water, and all difficulties disappear.
Geologists admit that in the Tertiary period mountains were made
on every continent, that there was a world-wide disturbance of strata,
and the most complete extermination of species on record. The
Cretaceous world was swept by a mighty cataclysmic wave, and its
animals were buried in the detrital mass swept from the land into the
seas and formed the lower Eocene beds. Nothing of which we can
conceive could do this but a downpour of Annular waters. One-third
of North America, a great part of Northern Europe, nearly all of Si-
beria, much of China, and other parts of Asia were apparently syn-
chronously submerged beneath
fresh water.
The ocean of fresh-water proves the augmentation of snows from the
great super-ariel fund. The Cretaceous age closed by excessive and
unusual refrigeration. The transported blocks of stone found in the
Upper Cretaceous and Lower Tertiary point to a northern origin. The
evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of an Annular fall of waters in the
north polar world at that time.
Existing continents were submerged under Cretaceous waters.
The Rocky Mountains, Andes, Alps and Himalayas were either unborn
or in their infant stage. But some mighty barrier was raised that
rolled the Cretaceous waters southward, and made an isolated fresh
water ocean on the north. It was the great Atlantic plateau reaching
from New Foundland to Ireland, which is known by actual soundings
and other evidence to be a submerged table land. It was raised
from the deep at this very time and stood for uncounted milleniums as
dry land.
Suppose an ice cap 5000 feet thick should suddenly cover the Arctic world. It would press that part of the globe inward and downward upon itself even if the planet were solid to the centre. It would render the rocks plastic and they would be pushed under the continents causing the crust of the earth to rise into
mountains in many places. Just what occurred in Cretaceous and
Tertiaiy times.
We oan trace the shoreline of an almost limitless fresh-water sea
around, the whole hemisphere in Tertiaiy times, showing that the Arctic ocean was a wide expanse of fresh waters. This leads to the positive and permanent establishment of the Vailian or Annular theory.
APPENDIX
THE LAST ADVANCE OF GLACIERS
The last downfall of exterior vapors was at the time of Noah, and
produced the deluge. These vapors naturally gravitated toward the
polar regions and falling there as snows would accumulate as glaciers,
their magnitude and extent corresponding with the amount of falling
snows. It is evident if there ever was ar Eden climate upon the earth
its destruction was brought about by a change of climate. If the
Deluge was a collapse of the last remnanit of upper waters the latter
must have begun to fall in polar regions many centuries previous.
The Eden world suffered a change of climate during the Adamic age,
for the race* that dwelt naked in Eden became clothed in the skins
of animals. If this infant race dwelt naked the climate was warm.
If afterward it became necessary to be clothed with the skins of animals
it certainly had become cold. If the cold increased it was probably
caused by the fall of snow in polar regions. The physical condition of
the antideluvians and their environment depended on the conditions of
the upper vapors. Hence, polar glaciers began to advance in Edenic
times.
Glaciers advanced slowly, and are still advancing. Eight hundred
years ago Greenland was not the frigid land it now is. The Iceland-
ers and the Northmen sailed through northern seas in the interest of
commerce where now our hardiest seamen with iron-clad vessels
scarcely dare to venture. They pushed forward commercial enter-
prises into lands that are now inhospitable and uninhabited.
The present glacitation of polar worlds is but the result of the last
declension of outward vapors. The great ice caps of polar regions are moving toward the equator and are constantly dimishing. It is possible that we are approaching a day when the last iceberg will be borne toward the tropics, and the last glacier will melt, and a more genial climate pervade the greater portion
of the earth.
LONGEVITY OF THE ANCIENTS
According to the biblical account people lived to be 800 and 900
years old. This was principally because of the modification of solar
energy. Man's physical environments impelled long life; and hie
longevity diminished immediately after the upper deep fell and the
sun began to pour his beams upon the race his environment evidently
changed with that event. In a few generations after the flood man died
at the age of 120 or 100 years, and finally at three score and ten.
LETTER FROM PROF. I. N. VAIL
MY DEAR DR. BOWERS:
I have read with much interest thy compendium of "The Earth's Annular System,"
as published by me in 1886. A synopsis of that work can give but a
meager idea of the grand conception of the annular evolution of the
earth. "The Annular Theory" stands on the immutable truth that worlds
evolve according to invariable law.
This compels us to" admit that all worlds are made alike, in the gen-
eral changes they undergo. Just as a bud evolves into a flower of the
most delicate construction and architectural order, so- a world launched
from the same designing Hand must move in the same line of eternal
order, and under the law of natural uniformity develop and grow into a
completed world.
This also leads us to the conclusion that if one world possess at any
time an annular system, then all worlds must possess a similar ap-
pendage during some period of their existence. Consequently that simple
fact that the planet Saturn possesses at this time an annular or ring sys-
tem is proof that the earth once had a similar appendage. For we must
either admit this truth or we must admit that the planet Saturn has
not evolved thus far along a line of nature's uniformity, but is today a victim of accidental conditions. This law refuses to admit.
But "The Annular Theory" does not rest on these grounds alone. A
universe of invariable order pronounces it an immutable truth. The
judgment of the chemist and philosopher is positive that a rotating
world cannot pass from the molten state to the present condition of the
earth without undergoing annular changes.
Since the publication of "The Earth's Annular System" I have had
opportunities of examining more minutely the subjects treated of
therein and have secured the most overwhelming evidence that the
theory there proposed is in the main correct and will stand the test of all
time. I have found, outside the realm of physical science, the most,
positive evidence that primitive man actually saw at least two rings re-
volving about the earth, named them and worshiped them as gods.
These relics I heve rescued from the wreck of ages, and with these I will
prove the fact that this earth once had a complex system of Saturn-
like rings.
Thus in the end the geologist and astronomer will be compelled to ad-
mit its truthfulness whether they desire to or not. I have found among the ruins of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, India and China annular fossils, the identification of which settles at once and forever this great question.
Again, I need not point the geologist to the mysteries of the glacial
epochs, which grow darker and darker as he looks for a competent
cause for their production. He must know that the great ocean of
vapors that hovered for unknown time ever the earth in the loftiest
heights of the atmosphere, such as now we have seen on two of our neighbor
planets;could not have fallen without covering it in the
Northern latitudes with measureless masses of snow, requiting in excess-
ive refrigeration. I need but point him to the fact, proven by the coast
survey of the world, that the oceans have encroached upon the land to such an extent since the last glacial epoch that they stand now fully thirty fathoms deeper than they did in pre-glacial times. I need only point him to that grand clock-work of worlds shining from the firmament every scintillating point,
every roiling sign, is a witness of natures eternal order, and proclaims
that principle of world evolution, by which the philosophic investigator must stand. The geologist must build on this rock of uniformity in the evolution of worlds. The earth has evolved along fine lines, and the wreck of annular con-
ditions is seen on every page of its rocky volume.
In the year 1875 I published a little volume entitled "The Earth's Aqueous Ring." In it 1 stated my convictions, and gave reasons therefore, that all the glacial periods the world ever saw were produced by supralerial vapors descending from
an annular system that revolved about the earth from the remotest
geologic ages to the liood of Noah, which was itself produced by the
fall oi f the last remnants of those upper waters. These claims I am
fully prepared to substantiate, whatever opposition" may be brought
against them.
ISAAC N. VAIL, ELSINORE, Gal.
Isaac Newton Vail was born to John Vail and Abigail (nee Edgerton) in Barnesville, Ohio in 1840. He was trained and then taught at the Quaker Seminary in Westtown, Pennsylvania, leaving to pursue his independent study of flood geology. Vail believed that the earth once had rings just as Saturn does today. This was called the Vailan or Annular theory.
To read more about Isaac Vail see https://www.velikovsky.info/isaac-vail/