Tlicorks of the Earth. 7 



'•comet, and by its attraction, drew around itself a sliroud of water, wliich 

 ■covered the tops of the highest mountains, and involved all living things in 

 an miiversal catastrophe. The punishment of the wicked being completed, 

 the earth became enlarged, yawned open and rcceieved the waters into iU 

 interior, and man was again restored. " In the universal wreck," says 

 Goldsmith, " Noah survived by a variety of happy causes, to re-people the 

 €arth, and to give birth to a race of men, slow in believing, ilUmagined 

 theories of the earth." 



Concerning the theories of Burnet, Woodward and "Whiston, all that 

 need be said is that they had not one fact in nature to support them. They 

 were purely the creations of the imagination. And yet they are not with- 

 out interest to the Geologist, who, in these we may recognize the first unsuc- 

 cessful efforts of the human mind, to make out the great truths afterward 

 acquired. The child must often fall, before it can walk with the well balanced 

 step of manhoood, and the tlieoretical I'ailures of the world-makers of the 

 past, are but the first struggles of the infant intellect of our race, to at- 

 tain that perfection wlilch the Almighty has willed can only be secured as 

 the fruit of labour. 



Kext came speculations of Buffon, who, being well acquainted with 

 natural history, was better prepared to deal with a subject, which can 

 only be understood by consulting nature herself. He supposed that the 

 matter of all the planets, at one time constituted a portion of the sun — that 

 a comet struck that luminary and so shook its whole frame, that some of 

 \\& particles were driven off like streaming sparkles from red hot iron and 

 that each of those jets of melted matter, formed itself into a planet Our 

 earth was thus derived from the sun. Having been launched far out into 

 the colder regions of space, it cooled down, solidified upon its surface and 

 became a habitable globe. 



Thus far Buffbn drew upon his imagination, but when he speaks of the 

 origin of stratified rocks and the occurrence of marine shells upon dry land, 

 his observations are more worthy of consideration. "■ The surliice of the 

 earth, says he," must have been in the beginning much less solid than it is 

 at present, and, consequently the same causes which at this day produce but 

 very slight changes, must then upon so complying a substance, have had 

 very considerable effects. We have no reason to doubt that it was then 

 covered with the waters of the sea, and that those waters were above 

 the tops of the highest mountains ; since, even in such elevated situations, 

 we find shells and other marine productions in very great abundance. It 

 appears also that the sea continued for a considerable time upon the face c»f 

 the earth, for as these layers of shells are found so very frequent at such 

 great depths, and in such prodigious quantities, it seems impossible for such 

 numbers to have been supported all alive at one time, so that they must 

 have been brought there by successive depositions. These shells also are 

 found in the bodies of the hardest rocks where they could not have been 

 deposited all at once at the time of the deluge, or at any such instant revo- 

 lution, since that would be to suppose that all the rocks in M'hich they 



