THE OREGON NATURALIST. 23 



who chose to imagine that the devil, trying. ,to vian, including such obviously recent deposits 

 imitate the living cieaiions of God had succeed- as are left by certain streams, 

 ed only in making stone images of animate ob- His learning was great and his reasoning 

 jects and had not the power of endowing them was so forcible that it carried conviction with 

 with life. it, and he left the imprint of his genius upon 

 Early in the eighteenth century all these crude the thought of his time. Investigators accept- 

 and vague speculations were swept entirely a- ed his views without demur, vied with each 

 way by the general acceptance of a hy]5olhesis other in Iheir eagerness to find arguments and 

 which had been quietly advanced from time to facts to sustain the position he had taken, and 

 time far nearly two centuries. Thus the 'flood the dissenting voices were few and feeble indeed, 

 theory', that is the idea that all the plants and While it cleared away one set of difficulties 

 animals now found in the earth as fossils had and gave a new basis for research it called out 

 lived upon its surface up to the Noachian del- a new set of problems, jirofounder and more 

 uge, and then! had been tossed and floated difficult of solution than any propounded before, 

 about during that great cataclysm and had fi- The most important of these were: Are these 

 nally been covered with debris and left to be fossils the remains of plants of the same species 

 petrified by natural agencies where we now find as those now living on earth, and when did the 

 them. A poor and fantastic theory indeed, but vegetation thus preserved flourish? 

 philosophically a great advance upon all former The manner in wiiich these topics were dis- 

 hypotheses, for. as Huxley says, it is easier for cussed appears inconceivalile to us, but we must 

 truth to make its way out of error than out of remember that Geology had not then become a 

 confusion. science, and the densest ignorance preailed re- 

 Martin Luther in his commentary on the garding the earth's ciust. Science was made 

 book of Genesis suggested that abundant evi- subordinate to an inspired cosmogony which 

 dences of the action of the deluge might still be declared that the earth was but a few thousand 

 found, and it was this hint that had finally turn- years old, 



ed speculation into the new channel. Scheuchzer asseited that fossils were the re- 



• This^theory was highly elaborated and forti- mains of ordinary plants and that their living 



fied by laborius arguments by Dr. John Wood- representatives were still to be found on the sur- 



ward, a collector and student of fossils, in his ^^^^ j^ ^j^^ ^^^^^ l^^^lj^^^ ^,^j j^ j^j^ ^^^^^_ 



great work published m London in 1695. Ac- ^.^,„ diluvianum (1723) he attempted to ar- 



cording to his hypothesis the earth's crust had ^_^^^^ ^^^^ according to the system of Tourne- 



been broken up and dissolved at the time when ^^^.^^ ^^ determined the genera to which they 



"all the fountains of the great deep were brok- ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ,,;, ^^^ satisfaction, and even 



en up', and when the waters receded all this ., ■ f „ r ,1 „„, r> j, r 



1 ' gave the species 01 some o! them, Fapuius 



debris was deposited according to its specific ■ , r , 



^ . nigra for example. 



gravity in strata containing organic remains as 



r , . (Concluded in March.) 



we now find tnem. 



There aro.se soon after this another and still ANGUS GAINES, 



greater champion of t'le flood theory, Johann Vincennes, ind. 



Jacob Scheuchzer, a man of rare ability, who 



had at his command all the learning of his time. ^ ^yy.y.\. Bird's Nest. — The "Enghsh Me- 

 He divided the history of the earth's crust in- chanic" says there is re]wrted in the Museum of 

 to three periods: Prediluviait, including the j,jj,tural History ai Saleure, in Switzerland, a 

 minerals, supposed by him to constitute the sol- i^jj-^'s nest made entirely of steel clock springs, 

 id jians of the globe; Dihivian, inclutling all ^hjch had been thrown away by the clock- 

 fossil beaiing or stmtihed deposits; Posl-dilu. makers 



