lation has been made with reference to the debris of mountains; and, in all cases, has indicated a period of about four thousand years. The same result has been obtained from the other alluvial deposits. In short, whatever has been the natural phenomenon that has been interrogated, it has always been found to give evidence in accordance with that of tradition. The traditions themselves exhibit the most astonishing conformity. The Hebrew text of Genesis places the deluge in the year 2349 before Christ. The Indians make the fourth age of the world, that in which we now live, to commence in the year 3012. The Chinese place it about the year 2384. Confucius, in fact, represents the first king Yeo, as occupied in drawing off the waters of the ocean, which had risen to the tops of the mountains, and in repairing the damage which they had occasioned.'

This result, so pleasing to the religious mind, has been attempted to be evaded by some ingenious writers, who, with considerable plausibility, have supported views altogether at variance with revelation, endeavouring to account for all the changes which have taken place both in the animate and inanimate creation, by a regular and uninterrupted succession of natural causes, continued for a vast but undefined period, amounting perhaps to millions of years; but with whatever ability these views have been supported, the straining of facts to which such writers are obliged to resort for the purpose of supporting a very untenable theory, is too apparent not to display the weakness of their cause. It is impossible, by any ingenuity, to mystify the fact that 'mountains decay with years,' and that there is a general tendency in nature to reduce all things to a level; which, in a period infinitely short of eternity, would reduce the sea to a muddy puddle, and the land to a swampy and pestilential marsh.

THIRTEENTH WEEK-SATURDAY.

VIL GEOLOGY.-EFFECTS OF THE DELUGE ON THE PRESENT SURFACE OF THE EARTH.

THE geological marks of a universal deluge are very clearly indicated, not merely by the facts we have been already considering, but also by appearances of a different kind. Marine shells are every where found, even on the loftiest mountains. These give evidence, either that the ocean has shifted its bed, or that it has swept over the earth as Moses has described; or, what is perhaps most probable from other indications, that both of these causes have been combined. But there are proofs of the flood still more unequivocal. There are deposits every where, which geologists have justly considered diluvial, and which, from their position on elevated ground or gentle slopes, are easily distinguished from the accumulations of lakes and rivers. In the whole course of my geological travels,' says Dr. Buckland, from Cornwall to Caithness, from Calais to the Carpathians, in Ireland or in Italy, I have scarcely ever gone a mile, without finding a perpetual succession of deposits of gravel, sand, or loam, in situations which cannot be referred to the action of modern torrents, rivers, or lakes, or any other existing causes. And with respect to the still more striking diluvial phenomena of drifted masses of rocks, the greater part of the northern hemisphere, from Moscow to the Mississipi, is described by various geological travellers, as strewed, on its hills as well as valleys, with blocks of granite, and other rocks of enormous magnitude, which have been drifted (mostly in a direction from north to south), a distance sometimes of many hundred miles, from their native beds, across mountains and valleys, lakes and seas, by force of water, which must have possessed a velocity to which nothing that occurs in the actual state of the globe affords the slightest parallel.'

The state of the earth's surface here described, must be

familiar to every one who has any taste for observation. What we call soil is nothing else than rocks rubbed down by detrition, or decomposed by the action of the atmosphere, and afterwards mixed with the decayed vegetable and animal substances to which it has given nourishment; and it is striking to observe with what beneficence the action of natural causes has been made to clothe the earth with a covering so admirably adapted for the purposes of organic life. The agency of the deluge in the whole operation is very apparent. First has rushed over the earth a wave of amazing force, bearing along with it in its resistless current every thing which existed on the surface of the globe as it then was,-destroying, submerging, and dispersing, man and beast, with all the labours of human art; tearing up and floating away, or burying deep, tree and shrub, plant and flower; throwing wide over all climates the seeds of every vegetable production, to form the germs of a new vegetation in an altered world; moving from their primeval foundations the peaks of the ancient mountains, and hurrying them broken, scattered, and rounded into stones and boulders, to distant regions, and over a wide extent; scooping out ravines, and raising waving hills of gravel and clay in the lower grounds; and, as it swept over the level tracts, depositing part of the more heavy materials with which it was loaded. After this mighty torrent, occasioned by the sudden disruption of the solid crust of the globe, had begun to subside, the turbid waters, in their slower motion, had proceeded to deposit the lighter burden with which they were fraught. The mud of this agitated and shoreless ocean, mingled with rounded stones of various size, had been gradually precipitated, and had formed a sediment of various depth, which was to serve as the vegetable soil of the future land; and this awful agent having now fulfilled the high behest of the Almighty, had gradually retired to those regions of the surface which were nearest the centre, obeying the universal laws of gravitation, by which liquids find their own level.

That the actual state of the earth's surface corresponds

very remarkably with this account of the manner in which a universal flood would naturally act, every one must, on the slightest survey, be sensible. But a more minute and careful examination strikingly confirms this general view. No one can look with a judicious eye on any extensive section of the upper deposits on the earth's surface, without being sensible of this. Sir James Hall turned the attention of geologists to the curious fact, that on the surface of sandstone, among the soil and debris which cover this early deposit, large boulders, sometimes of the same kind of rock, and frequently also of rock of a kind altogether foreign to the locality, are very often to be found; and that, where this is the case, the upper stratum of the rock is marked with grooves or scratches, generally lying in a south-west direction, and evidently attributable to the impression of these boulders, hurried along by the currents during the action of the flood. The Craigleith Quarry, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, which is remarkable as containing a very fine example of a fossil tree in the very heart of the secondary deposit, is a well known example of this. The intelligent manager of this extensive work, has traced these grooves over the whole surface of the quarry, wherever the diluvial soil has been removed;* and the same phenomenon is familiar to every person who is conversant with similar excavations. In the quarry of Corncocklemuir, for instance, where the footsteps of primeval animals have been discovered, it is evident that the whole upper surface of the strata has been forcibly torn off before the diluvial soil was deposited, and among that soil are found large portions of the sandstone detached from the living rock.

Dr. Buckland doubts whether these proofs of a flood of immense force sweeping over the surface of the earth, should be referred to the Mosaic deluge, or to that which submerged the world immediately before the creation of man. 'It has been justly argued,' says he, ' against the attempt to identify these two great historical and natural phenomena, that, as * Geology of Scripture, p. 345.

the rise and fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to have been gradual, and of short duration, they would have produced comparatively little change on the surface of the country they overflowed. The large preponderance of extinct species among the animals we find in caves, and in superficial deposits of diluvium, and the nondiscovery of human bones along with them, afford strong reason for referring these species to a period anterior to the creation of man. This important point, however, cannot be considered as completely settled till more detailed investigation of the newest members of the Pliocene, and of the diluvial and alluvial formations, shall have taken place.' It is well to speak with caution when a sufficient number of facts have not been collected; but, for my own part, I see little force in the objections here stated. No deluge, which rose in a few weeks over the tops of the highest mountains, and enveloped the whole habitable globe, could possibly be tranquil. The discovery of extinct species may be accounted for by the extermination of such animals as the Creator saw would no longer be suitable to the new condition of the earth when it emerged from the waters; and the non-discovery of human bones in the places yet examined, by no means precludes the probability of finding them in the extensive regions of the East, yet unexplored, where it is universally believed the human race had their origin. Geologists jump too quickly to conclusions. How small a tract of the crust of the earth has yet been examined, and even that small tract how imperfectly!

If it should appear, however, that the organized existences of what Mr. Lyell calls the Pliocene period of the tertiary formation, are sometimes, or even frequently, mingled with those which were destroyed and submerged at the Deluge, this is just what might be expected, on the supposition that the Pliocene period ended in a similar catastrophe. At the period of the Mosaic creation, these existences, both animal and vegetable, would, of course, be mingled with the diluvium which formed the surface of the new earth, and when