The London, Edinburgh and Dublin philosophical magazine and journal of science . Philo-phical Transactions as if he had seen them for the first am not aware of any evidence as to whether Plana hadknown their contents; and it is possible that his conclusionsas to the forms of the strata of the shell and nucleus had beenformed independently, though published a short time after myinvestigations. The annexed figure may assistin making clear the results ofthe preceding paragraphs. Theouter ellipse represents the out-line of the exterior surface of theEarths crust, which is shadedand bounded
The London, Edinburgh and Dublin philosophical magazine and journal of science . Philo-phical Transactions as if he had seen them for the first am not aware of any evidence as to whether Plana hadknown their contents; and it is possible that his conclusionsas to the forms of the strata of the shell and nucleus had beenformed independently, though published a short time after myinvestigations. The annexed figure may assistin making clear the results ofthe preceding paragraphs. Theouter ellipse represents the out-line of the exterior surface of theEarths crust, which is shadedand bounded inwardly by a sur-face slightly more elliptical. Thefluid nucleus included within theshell is represented with stratadecreasing in ellipticity towardsthe centre. This arrangementis necessarily followed by a mass ! of fluid under such conditions as the nucleus, or under the conditions of the entirely fluidEarth. If the matter composing the Earth underwent nochange in passing from the fluid to the solid state, insteadof the arrangement here represented, the inner surface of the. 246 Prof. H. Henness3r on the shell would have a smaller ellipticity than its outer surface,and the strata of the shell, as well as those of the nucleus, wouldbe less oblate in going from the outer surface. (6) It is important to distinctly bear in mind that the con-stitution of the shell and nucleus indicated by the foregoingreasonings is not based on any hypothesis of a specific law ofdensity of the interior strata of the Earth. It is a deductionfrom the established properties of fluids quite as rigorous asthe conclusions regarding the spheroidal shape of a mass ofrotating liquid. On the other hand, the supposition tacitlyor openly made by Mr. Hopkins and his followers, that theellipticity of the inner stratum of the solid shell is preciselythe same as that which this stratum had when fluid, is notmerely a hypothesis—it is an assumption which is directlycontradicted by the recognized physical properti
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