You have seen the
same principle practically applied in the modern cream separator.
Presently there was only a small super-heated core of gaseous matter
remaining within a huge vacant interior left by the contraction of
the cooling gases. The equal attraction of the solid crust from
all directions maintained this luminous core in the exact center of
the hollow globe. What remains of it is the sun you saw today--a
relatively tiny thing at the exact center of the earth. Equally
to every part of this inner world it diffuses its perpetual noonday
light and torrid heat.
"This inner world must have cooled sufficiently to support animal
life long ages after life appeared upon the outer crust, but that
the same agencies were at work here is evident from the similar
forms of both animal and vegetable creation which we have already
seen. Take the great beast which attacked us, for example.
Unquestionably a counterpart of the Megatherium of the post-Pliocene
period of the outer crust, whose fossilized skeleton has been found
in South America."
"But the grotesque inhabitants of this forest?" I urged. "Surely
they have no counterpart in the earth's history."
"Who can tell?" he rejoined. "They may constitute the link between ape
and man, all traces of which have been swallowed by the countless
convulsions which have racked the outer crust, or they may be merely
the result of evolution along slightly different lines--either is
quite possible.
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