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 fluids can resist the operation of a very high temperature without evaporating, if prevented by a proportionally stronger compression, water and all other liquids being able to sustain a red heat in Papin's digester; we must admit, that the new atmosphere would at last arrive at such a degree of weight, that the water which had not hitherto evaporated would cease to boil, and, of consequence, would remain liquid; so that, even upon this supposition, as in all others of the same nature, the increasing gravity of the atmosphere would find certain limited which it could not exceed. We might even extend these reflection greatly farther, and examine what change might be produced in such situations upon stones, salts, and the greater part of the fusible substances which compose the mass of the earth. These would be softened, fused, and changed into fluids, &c.: But these speculations carry me from my object, to which I hasten to return.

By a contrary supposition to the one we have been forming, if the earth were suddenly transported into a very cold region, the water which at present composes our seas, revers, and springs, and probably the greater number of the fluids we are acquainted with, would be converted into solid mountains and hard rocks, at first diaphanous