58 ON INCREDULITY WITH RESPECT TO GEOLOGICAL FACTS. 
carries away a very different burden to that washed by the Atlantic 
off the rocky coast of Ireland. As a more practical illustration 
we may point to the fact that a great deposition of chalk is now 
going on in the channels of the Bermudas, where the ship anchors 
come up covered with white lime mud.” 
Our friend is willing to allow now that there may be some 
foundation for what we advanced, and the next question probably 
will be, Might not all the shells found fossil have been left by the 
Deluge? We reply, No; and avery little consideration will show 
us this. We find fossils in every variety of situation, from the 
surface to depths of hundreds and thousands of feet. Now of 
course these shells were there before the enclosing substance—chalk 
or whatever else,—and if we find them at the bottom of chalk 
masses several hundred feet in depth, it follows that this thickness 
of chalk has been laid over them since. Is it at all probable that 
the forty days of aqueous tumult produced this? If so, how can 
we account for the alternate layers of flint and chalk? But the 
greatest objection is this. We find one particular class of fossils 
in our chalk hills, a totally different class in the oolitic hills of 
Gloucestershire, and another amongst the coal beds of Lancashire : 
how could the waters of the Deluge be so discriminating ? How 
happens it that the different classes of animal remains are never 
confusedly mixed? And the chalk in England yields the same 
fossils as that in Europe—the coal of Lancashire and that of North 
America gives us the same—in fact each particular formation, in 
whatever part of the world it may be, yields its own peculiar 
class of fossil: this could not have been brought about by a 
chaotic flood, but by some agent, regular in its action, and obedient 
to certain laws. The same kind of reasoning will apply to the 
fact that the various formations are as regular in the order of 
superposition as the fossils ; if the Flood: brought them about, 
how is it that each occupies a certain determinate relative position 
—that the Lane End clay has never yet been found beneath chalk 
—that chalk always lies above green,—coal always below 
oolite and Jias? I think that these questions are sufficient to 
show our wavering friend that he must give way a little, 
