122 Analysis of Scientific ^ooks. 



and floating upon the hosom of the ocean ; let ns further suppose all tlic 

 races of animals, of all climates, crowded confusedly in close contact, and i« 

 numberless masses, implicated in those floating forests, and buoyant upon 

 the face of the waters, and operated upon by the impulsory powers of re- 

 tiring currents, tides, and winds. It is impossible to deny, that such im- 

 mense conjoined masses, presenting vast surfaces to the winds and retreat- 

 ing waters, would be driven before them to very great distances before 

 they would all be submerged. If the continents from which they came 

 ■were south of the sea bed, and if the sea flowed to the southward, they 

 would then be transported in a northerly direction, just as the waters of 

 the equatorial current, which fall against a western lond, retrograde to an 

 eastern sea.— —Thus the spoils, successively gathered from the old conti- 

 nents, would have been driven over the northern parts of tlie primitive sea ; 

 would have been sunk upon different parts of its bed, and buried in its soils. 

 And if a great moral end was capable of being effected by the operation, 

 a fact which the present argument renders indisputable, the direction of 

 these amazing monuments to their actual stations, by the instrumentality 

 of the natural agent, was in every respect consistent with his power an3 

 intelligence who afterwards " caused a wind to pass over the earth, that 

 the waters might be assuaged." 



To prove that the distance between the old equatorial and 

 present northern continents is not greater than might well have 

 been traversed by those immense floating masses, our author 

 mentions the fact of a vessel, almost under bare-poles, having 

 come from Halifax to Spithead, a distance of three thousand 

 miles, in thirteen days. The space from the equator to 

 Tobolsk, in Siberia, is four thousand miles, and the mouth of 

 the Lena is nine hundred miles farther. 



The substances thus transported must necessarily have been 

 imbedded in the yielding mud, in which they would ultimately 

 sink, — some less, others more deeply, according to the peculiar 

 circumstances arising from local causes ; and as the transport 

 was by water, and the bed that received them soft, they would 

 be uninjured by trituration or fracture, and the bones of the 

 several animals so deposited would be found, as they fre- 

 quently are found, perfect and entire. But it has been ob- 

 jected that whole skeletons have not been found, and, therefore, 

 they could not have been transported ; but wherever the animals 

 died, they must have died with their skeletons entire ; and if 

 parts only are found, the rest must have mouldered away, — and 

 what difference could there have been, in this respect, whether 

 they had died where they were found, or had been transported 

 thither, and there deposited ? Cuvier's argument (for it is he 

 who advances it) makes rather against, than for the end to 

 which he adduces it. 



But facts also are against him, for the entire skeleton of an 

 elephant has been found at Tonna, in Thuringia, another at the 

 mouth of the Lena, and one of a rhinoceros in the banks of 

 the Vilhoui. Thus we can account rationally for the discovery 

 of the confused fragments of animals of all climates in the 

 strata of our earth, end see how the bodies of elephants, rhino- 

 ceroses, &c., may have been transported from the torrid zone 

 to the north of Europe, and imbedded at the various depths at 

 v/hich they are now found in England or Siberia, without re- 



