Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. II9 



is ingenious. It removes many difficulties which any other 

 view of the subject has to contend with ; it does away with 

 the necessity of those repeated revolutions, which, on no ground 

 but that it cannot do without them, the mineral geology is 

 continually having recourse to, and it refers similar effects to 

 similar causes. Throughout his whole argument our author 

 connects physical causes and events with the moral effects 

 they were destined to produce ; and, it is for want of this 

 rational association of the two, that the mineral geology, per- 

 plexed with difficulties of its ovn creating, fails to draw correct 

 inferences from either. It sees, in the beginning and the end, 

 nothing but physical phenomena ; it endeavours to explain 

 them by reference to physical causes alone, according to its 

 limited knowledge of those causes ; it finds itself incapable of 

 doino- so, without assumptions irreconcilable with and in 

 direct opposition to the Mosaical record, and therefore it con- 

 cludes that record to be false, or misinterprets and makes it 

 bend in every particular to rules drawn from its own pre- 

 conceived and chimerical opinions. 



The time allotted to this supernatural revolution was twelve 

 months. At the moment when, by the subsidence of the old 

 earth, the waters began to flow into their new bed, God 

 grounded the ark on the summit of Mount Ararat : in seventy- 

 three days after this event, the tops of the mountains ap- 

 peared; and in sixty days more, the waters were entirely drained 

 off from the surface of the earth. The security of the ark 

 demanded this gradual transfer of the mass of waters, for, had 

 the former continents sunk at once, the rush of the waters to 

 fill the gulf must have hurried the ark into the tremendous 



vortex but it is represented as riding securely on the surface 



of the universal ocean. " The ark went upon the surface of 

 the waters." 



That the sea once covered the whole earth, and that its 

 surface has undergone great destruction and depressions, and a 

 violent revolution since its first formation, is acknowledged by 

 both geologies, but the Mosaical admits only two revolutions, 

 whilst the mineral affirms them to have been numerous. 



Our author then proceeds to shew that the general phe- 

 nomena of the earth may be satisfactorily referred either, 1 . to 

 the creation ; 2. the first revolution ; 3. the long interval that 

 succeeded it, during which the sea remained in its primitive 

 basin ; or 4. to the second revolution. To the first cause 

 belong the sensible characters and diversities of all primitive 

 rocks and soils; to the second, those of their dislocation, frac- 

 ture, and dispersion ; to the third, the water-worn appearance 

 of the larger and smaller fragments of rocks and stones, and 

 the moulding of the loose soil over the solid substrata, as well 

 as the vast accumulations of marine substances. Lastly, to 

 tlie second revolution, the excavation of valleys in secondary 



