of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. 317 



superficies of present and sensible phenomena, and seems afraid 

 of venturing to ascend to the principles which generated them. 

 " The Reliquice Diluviance has indeed ably and unanswerably- 

 added to the demonstrations of the truth of the sacred history of 

 a deluge ; not by hypotheses of hyoenas' dens, but by its sagacious 

 discrimination between alluvial and diluvial productions ; and by 

 its enforcement of the amazing proofs of inundation at high levels ;" 

 and the conviction we thus obtain of the truth and consistency of 

 the sacred historian in this respect, stimulates us to seek the same 

 character in his history of every thing which preceded that event, 

 up to the hour of creation. 



By combining the history, given us by Moses, of the creation, 

 with his history of the destruction of the former earth, and by 

 comparing both with the actual phenomena of our globe, " we 

 have found the most powerful evidences conspire to substantiate 

 the transport of the dead bodies of a former animal creation, from 

 the tropics towards the poles," but none to support the sup- 

 position of the hypothesis, that animal genera, now confined to 

 the tropics, once inhabited northern Europe; none that the rela- 

 tions of the sun and the circles of the earth have ever so much 

 varied as to produce the climate of the torrid zone in the polar 

 vicinities of the temperate, essential to that supposition. In short, 

 the point at issue resolves itself into this question ; " Whether the 

 exuviae went to a polar climate, or a polar climate has come to the 

 exuvise." 



BufTon supposed our earth to be a bit of the sun knocked off 

 by a blundering comet, and that it gradually cooled as it passed 

 through space ; " the eminent author of the hypothesis of the 

 hyaena's den" cautiously abstains " from committing himself by 

 any opinion as to what the cause of the change of climate was ;" 

 nevertheless he decidedly thinks that the presence of the remains 

 of tropical animals at Kirkdale, proves them to have been ante- 

 diluvian inhabitants of Britain, and that, therefore, the northern 

 latitudes were probably warmer before the deluge, than they are 

 at the present day. The direct contrary to this is asserted and 

 supported by Daines Barrington*, who says, " that the seasons 

 have become infinitely more mild in the northern latitudes than 

 they were sixteen or seventeen centuries ago ;" and the Abbe 

 Man concludes from numerous testimonies that all the countries 

 from Spain to the Indies, and from Mount Atlas to Lapland, have 

 passed from extreme humidity and cold to a great degree of dry- 

 ness and warmth t. 



• Philosophical Transactions for January 18, 17G8. 



+ Memnires sur les grandes gelees,3v. 



The increasing temperature as we descend into deep mines, has lately 

 been adduced as an argument in favour of the hypothesis of the gradually 

 diminishing heat of the earth. The following solution of the phenomenon 



