event, relates the circumstances of the deluge with considerable minuteness. The year, month, and day of its commencement are stated, (Genesis, vii. 11.) Its object, too, is particularly announced -to destroy from off the face of the earth every living substance that had been created; and immediately following, in verse 13, it would appear, that not only men and animals, but even the solid earth

itself was "destroyed." "And God said unto

Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." For this purpose," the fountains of the great deep were opened up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heavens were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days." From this period, we are told, the waters gradually subsided, till, at the end of the twelfth month, Noah descended from the ark. That this was a general inundation and destruction of the then habitable earth, seems to be implied by the comprehensive terms in which it is expressed. Had it only been partial, and confined

to the localities then possessed by mankind, the precaution of saving the animals of a district would seem unnecessary, when a supply might have been obtained in adjacent countries. The general and obvious interpretation of the narrative, then, has been that of a total destruction of the then habitable earth. Such was the general impression of the Jews, as we learn from Josephus and Philo. In this light, too, it is alluded to by the ancient prophets and evangelists.*

We now turn to the inquiry, whether geology presents any proofs of these historical records. In the earlier stages of the sciences, almost every appearance in the earth's strata was ascribed to the action of the deluge, - the formation of rocks, the presence of marine shells, and the bodies of animals strewed in the soil and gravel. After the indubitable circumstance was ascertained, however, that the whole of the existing strata, surveyed by geologists, had at one time formed the bottom of an ancient ocean, a new light was thrown upon the subject, and the deluge, hitherto employed as a powerful and universal agent, sunk greatly in public estimation, and by many has been entirely discarded; while those who still seek for its indications, confine their views almost entirely to the superficial clay, mud, and gravelly deposits called diluvium.

This diluvial covering is universal over the * Note XIII.

globe. It is found superimposed on every kind of strata, to whatever series that strata may belong; and though it may thin off in some places, so as scarcely to be perceptible, yet the portions so denuded will be found to have yielded their share of the diluvial matter to some adjoining hollow or valley.

Though generally of a clayey or sandy composition, it varies in many localities, partaking of the nature of the debris of the surrounding districts. Boulders, or round masses of rocks, of various sizes, often transported from hundreds of miles distance, are also abundant, mingled with smaller gravel and fragments of rocks. It contains also, in greater or less abundance, the bones of quadrupeds and other terrestrial animals, both of extinct and existing species. Bones of the elephant, mammoth, rhinoceros, hyena, ox, deer, horse, &c. are abundantly found in Britain, and on the continents of

Europe and Asia. The mastodon, megatherium, and opossum tribe, are mingled with others in America and New Holland contains bones belonging to the marsupial class of animals, mingled with fossil remains common to the old continents. The relative ages of this diluvial matter, in the different regions of the globe, or even in different parts of the same country, is still a subject unascertained by geologists; but the similarity of its general remains in all countries,

"

according to the usual test applied to the underlying formations, should claim for it something of a contemporaneous deposition.

In many situations it can be proved to have been accumluated at a period immediately following the upheaving of the strata, above which it is deposited, and immediately, or at a comparatively short interval, preceding the commencement of the present soil and vegetation.*

While some, then, believe this diluvium to have been the effect of the Noachian deluge, and to consist chiefly of the loose soil of the first formed continents, swept away and deposited on the strata elevated from the bed of the ocean by extensive volcanic convulsions of the globe at that period, others consider it the ruins of an antecedent world, which had an existence previous to the creation of the present. A third party, again, deny any universal or general cataclysm of the kind, and look upon the diluvial matter as a partial formation, deposited at different and long distant periods. As this theory does not demand a reconcilement with the Mosaical history, it is unnecessary to notice it farther here.

But to those who hold the opinion, that the Mosaic creation begins to be first indicated by our vegetable soil lying immediately above the

* See Remarks on the Diluvium around Edinburgh, p. 33; and illustrative section, note I. at the end of the volume.

diluvium, and that all below are the ruins of another world, we would just ask, where are the indications of the deluge? If, as Moses relates, all living beings then existing, the accumulated increase of two thousand years, were destroyed, where are their remains, or the indications of the waters prevailing over the earth for nearly twelve months? It may be replied, that the chief locality of the "flood" cannot yet have been discovered, as no well authenticated human remains have hitherto been found; but every region of the earth has now been sufficiently explored, where plants, and animals, or man, could have had an existence, according to this supposed theory, and yet no traces of a desolated world can be shewn, if we except a few stags' horns in peat mosses, and a few fresh water shells in our evidently recent and alluvial deposits. If "all flesh was destroyed with the earth," the catastrophe was not surely of that placid nature that it left no traces behind. Yet some have entertained this opinion. Linnæus says, he could see no traces of a universal deluge. Dr Fleming, in an elaborate refutation of Professor Buckland's "Proofs of a Deluge," declares, that to behold any such proofs would be repugnant to his belief of the sacred records; and Dr Buckland, after having devoted an octavo to the proofs of this catastrophe, renounces his former opinions in a short note to his later treatise on geology. Cuvier, on the