PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL GEOLOGY. 583 



the whole is, to countenance the doctrine of the metempsychosis, an;l 

 the Pythagorean injunction of not eating animal food. It is clear, I 

 think, that facts so introduced must be considered as having been con 

 templated rather in the spirit of poetry than of science. 



We must estimate in the same manner, the very remarkable passage 

 brought to light by M. Elie de Beaumont,* from the Arabian writer, 

 Kazwiri ; in which we have a representation of the same spot of 

 ground, as being, at successive intervals of five hundred years, a city, a 

 sea, a desert, and again a city. This invention is adduced, I conceive, 

 rather to feed the appetite of wonder, than to fix it upon any reality : 

 as the title of his book, The Marvels of Nature, obviously intimates. 



The speculations of Aristotle, concerning the exchanges of land and 

 sea which take place in long periods, are not formed in exactly the 

 same spirit, but they are hardly more substantial; and seem to be 

 quite as arbitrary, since they are not confirmed by any examples and 

 proofs. After stating, 8 that the same spots of the earth are not always 

 land and always water, he gives the reason. " The principle and cause 

 of this is," he says, " that the inner parts of the earth, like the bodies 

 of plants and animals, have their ages of vigor and of decline ; but in 

 plants and animals all the parts are in vigor, and all grow old, at once : 

 in the earth different parts arrive at maturity at different times by the 

 operation of cold and heat : they grow and decay on account of the 

 sun and the revolution of the stars, and thus the parts of the earth 

 acquire different power, so that for a certain time they remain moist. 

 and then become dry and old : and then other places are revivified, 

 and become partially watery." We are, I conceive, doing no injustice 

 to such speculations by classing tlfem among fanciful geological 

 opinions. 



We must also, I conceive, range in the same division another class 

 of writers of much more modern times ; I mean those who have 

 framed their geology by interpretations of Scripture. I have already 

 endeavored to show that such an attempt is a perversion of the pur 

 pose of a divine communication, and cannot lead to any physical truth. 

 I do not here speak of geological speculations in which the Mosaic 

 account of the deluge has been referred to ; for whatever errors may 

 have been committed on that subject, it would be as absurd to dis- 

 regard the most ancient historical record, in attempting to trace back 

 Lhe history of the earth, as it would be, gratuitously to reject any other 



* Ann. des Sc. Nat. xxv. 380. " Mcicorol. i. H. 



