Antediluvian Congelation of the Water of Bocks, 49 



congelation, general or contemporary with the phenomena to 

 which we have directed attention. 



It is true, that the several gVoups of rocks down to the su- 

 percretaceous deposits, all exhibit successive evidences to the 

 modern botanist and zoologist of a decreasing temperature of 

 the earth's surface having, as it were, intermittently taken 

 place during a long course of ages ; but it seems difficult to 

 discover any records of a long or violent depression of tempe- 

 rature, equal to what we have presumed to have occasioned 

 the phenomena of the rocks under our notice. In order, 

 therefore, to fix upon some well-defined characters of climato- 

 rial refrigeration, the effects of which we can appreciate, we are 

 brought down to the period when the Elephas lyrimogenius^ 

 the Mastodon, and the Bhinoceros, with other mammalia, the 

 presumed inhabitants of warm or tropical climates, were de- 

 stroyed and buried up in the superficial gravels and clays of 

 Europe and America; not to omit the more corroborative 

 proof of a great and sudden congelation of the surface of the 

 ground, which the elephants encased in ice at the embouchure 

 of the river Lena and the neighbouring coast afford. Though 

 the woolly hair found on the bodies of these animals, may 

 have adapted them to live in a temperate climate, yet such a 

 country, as where their remains now are found, could not have 

 afforded them food ; and from all the circumstances of the 

 case, there is every reason to infer, that a sudden and great 

 reduction of temperature took place during their lives, and 

 arrested these animals, along with many others, on the wild 

 fields of their pasture, they being probably afterwards sub- 

 jected to some diluvial transportation. In the present state 

 of our knowledge, this is the only period which we can asso- 

 ciate in point of time, if contemporaneity is necessary with that 

 in which the congelation of the rocks of which we have treated 

 took place. That it was also connected and followed by great 

 physical revolutions over the surface of the earth, sufficient 

 almost to countenance the idea ofne7v heavens and a neiv earth, 

 is what we may safely aver from the phenomena of marked dis- 

 integration, displacement, and transportation of rocks and 

 boulders, and the immense beds and deposits of rocky detritus 



VOL. XXXI. NO. LXI. JULY 1841. D 



