GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES. 251 



It is scarcely necessary to remind you of the fact that the sun is 

 a body so hot that the most refractory substances known to us on 

 the earth exist in it in a state of gas or vapor ; tongues of glow- 

 ing gas shoot from it like flames ; the clouds which emit its bril- 

 liant light are probably clouds of carbon or silicon, which have 

 momentarily condensed from a gaseous state ; and rain, if rain 

 ever occurs, must be a rain of molten metals, such as iron, which 

 will be dissipated in gas before it has fallen very far. 



If we proceed to the more remote nebulae, largely composed of 

 glowing masses of gas, we find a suggestion of a stage more 

 embryonic still, when the earth had as yet no separate existence, 

 but formed, with its sister planets and the sun, a single shining 

 cloud. On the other hand, if we turn our gaze on our nearest 

 relative offspring possibly that dead planet, the moon, we may 

 read in its pallid disk the sad reminder, " Such as I am, you, too, 

 some day will be." 



But this was not all that was contained in the admonition of 

 physics ; it showed not only that the earth is mortal, but that its 

 span of life, as measured in years, or millions of years, is brief 

 compared to the almost unlimited periods which geology had 

 been in the habit of postulating. If catastrophic geology had at 

 times pushed Nature to almost indecent extremes of haste, uni- 

 formitarian geology, on the other hand, had erred in the opposite 

 direction, and pictured Nature, when she was " young and wan- 

 toned in her prime," as moving with the tame sedateness of 

 advanced middle age. It became necessary, therefore, as Dr. 

 Haughton expresses it, " to hurry up the phenomena." 



With its uniformitarianism thus moderated, geology has again 

 become cosmologic, and, neglecting no study that can throw light 

 on any question connected with our planet, has regained its posi- 

 tion as the science of the earth : it is henceforth known as evolu- 

 tional geology. 



The change has not taken place without occasional relapses 

 into catastrophism. Some indications of this can, I fancy, be 

 perceived in the writings of that eminently great geologist Suess, 

 who, among other suggestions savoring of heresy, has lately 

 recalled attention to the " Deluge," and endeavored to show that 

 though certainly local, and indeed confined to the Mesopotamian 

 Valley, it was on a grander scale than we had been accustomed to 

 suppose, or, in plain language, a genuine historic catastrophe. 



A local flood must have had a locality, and the clew to this is 

 furnished by Genesis itself, which informs us that Abraham, the 

 founder of the Hebrew race, left his ancestral city, " Ur of the 

 Chaldees," at a time long subsequent to the flood ; it is, therefore, 

 rather in the land of the Chaldees than in Palestine that we 

 should be led to seek the scene of this momentous, tragedy. 



