318 



the creeds of America, Mexico, Peru, Africa, Abyssinia ; in short, 

 from every source that was open to him. 



Subject 2 is of the Septenary divisicm of Time and the Sabbath, 

 in which again his quotations show his very extensive reading. 



Subject 3. Of the State of Innocence and the Fall of Man. 



Subject 4. Of Sacrifice, in which are notices of customs in all 

 parts of the world. 



Subject 5. Of Tithes. 



Subject 6. Of the Deluge, At page 96 [edition 1824] he says : 



" Traditional reports have been collected and brought forward by every 

 apologist for revelation from tbe first ages of Christianity to the present day, 

 and may be referred to in Stillingfleet, Gale, and Ramsay ; but independently 

 of divine authority, the most convincing evidence is to be sought for in the 

 records which remain engraved in the deepest mines, and on the most elevated 

 mountains. 



In the display I am about to make of this natural evidence scattered over 

 the surface of the earth, I shall simply state my facts, and then examine what 

 inferences may fairly be derived from them, and for this purpose I shall first 

 explore one small tract of country, that the attention of the young geologist 

 may not be distracted by a multiplicity of objects crowding at once upon his 

 view. "When he has surveyed this island he may be the better qualified for 

 more distant excursions, and be able to compare its strata and extraneous 

 fossils with those of every other portion of the globe. Ho will be thus pre- 

 pared to follow me in my general conclusion, and will be convinced that the 

 Mosaic account of the deluge is agreeable to truth." 



Then immediately follows from page 97 to page 403 the geological 

 portion of the woi'k, and we hear nothing more of Moses till at p. 

 403, we are told " we may safely draw this conclusion, that our 

 continents are not of a more remote antiquity than has been assigned 

 to them by the sacred historian in the beginning of his Pentateuch." 



Thus the bulk of the book is the sixth subject of the 2nd section 

 of the 2nd chapter " of the Deluge," and stowed away in this very 

 unexpected place, there was given to the world the first attempt at a 

 connected account of the English strata with their extraneous fossils, 

 with brief notices of (lithologically) similar strata in other parts of 

 the world. Farcy's Derbyshire, vol. 1., was published in 1811, but 

 though in this Farey was the first to refer in a book to Smith's 

 discoveries yet his whole scope is very different from Townsend's. 



The matter is arranged under different headings. The first " of 



