314 Organic Remains of the Diluvium in Norfolk. 



Madrepora centralis, ManteFs Fossils, &c., tab. XVI. figs. 

 2 and 4, enveloped in a black flint. 



A compound porpital madreporite, resembling fig. 4, plate 

 VII. in vol. ii. of Parkinson's Organic Remains. 



The vegetable remains consist of fragments of wood, imbed- 

 ded in septaria, calcareous sandstone, carstone, oolitic lime- 

 stone, and black flint ; it occurs bored by teredines, bitumi- 

 nized, silicified, and impregnated with oxide of iron, andiron 

 pyrites. 



A few remarks only remain to be offered in conclusion. On 

 referring to the diluvian remains enumerated, it cannot but at- 

 tract notice, that they should consist of the bones of land ani- 

 mals, except in a very few instances of those of the whale. 

 This singular fact naturally leads to an inquiry into the source 

 of the water that inundated the earth at the Noachian deluge, 

 and raises a question as to its marine origin. If the deluge 

 were produced by the sea leaving its bed (our present dry land), 

 to be deposited in another basin ; or inundated the then inha- 

 bited surface, for a certain time, and receded ; in either case, 

 surely, some of its testaceous inhabitants would have been de- 

 posited with the mud. I am not aware that this subject has 

 been before placed in a similar point of view. I have not time 

 to search early writers and theorists ; indeed, I do not intend to 

 argue the point, nor, perhaps, am I competent to the task; I 

 merely state the fact and raise the question. 1 believe it not 

 to have been a marine irruption. Holy Writ * bears me out in 

 my assertion ; the absence of the diluvian remains of marine 

 testacea is powerfully corroborative, and (in my opinion) alone 

 warrants the doubt above promulgated. 



* Genesis, chap. vii. verses 4, 1 1, and 12. 



InD'Oyly's and Mant's Bil)le,the following notes are sfiven upon verses 

 11 and 12. Verse 11 —And the windows of Heaven were opened — " By 

 this must be understood the causing of the waters, which were suspended 

 in the clouds, to fall upon the earth, not in ordinary showers, but in 

 floods, or, as the Seventy translate it, in cataracts; of which travellers 

 may have the truest notion, who have seen those prodigious falls of water, 

 so frequent in the Indies, where the clouds many times do not break into 

 drops, but fall with a terrible violence in a torrent." — Bishop Patrick — 

 — Stackhouse. 



Verse 12. — Andthe rain was upon the earth forty days, <^c. — " It con- 

 tinued raining so Jong without any intermission." — Bishop Patrick, 



