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fequentlyour adual mountains were all formed in the antediluvian 

 ocean, and thus fhells might be left on their higheft fumraits. 



In this hypothefis the ancient continents muft have cxiftcd in 

 thofe trads now covered by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans ; if fo, 

 I do not fee how the elephants could have been brought into 

 Siberia, or a whole rhinoceros found in it : For Siberia being 

 then the bottom of fome ocean, the fea muft have moved from it 

 to cover the finking continents, inftead of moving towards it, to 

 flrew over it their fpoils. — If it be faid that thefe animals were 

 carried into the fea before the flood, then, afluredly, the rhino- 

 ceros fhould have been devoured, and only his bones left. 



To fay nothing of the incompatibility of this fyftem with the 

 principal geologic phoenomena mentioned in my former Eflay, 

 and of the deftrudion of at leaft all the graminivorous fifh that 

 muft have followed from their transfer to a foil not fuited to them, 

 it is evidently inconfiftent with the Mofaic account of this cataf- 

 trophe, which account thefe philofophers however admit. 



MosES afcribes the deluge to two principal caufes, a continual 

 rain for forty days, and the eruption of the waters of the great 

 abyfs. Now to what purpofe a rain of forty days to overwhelm 

 a continent that was to be immerfed under a whole ocean ? He 

 tells us the waters hicreafed on the continents a certain number 

 of days, rejied thereon another period of days, and then returned. 



Do 



