Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. 123 



quiring any change either in the natures of the species, or in 

 the climates of the earth. . 



As to the multitudinous masses of bone found m caverns m Uer- 

 many, Hungary, and elsewhere, our author very rationally, we 

 think, concludes them to have been carried into those cavities, 

 (which must have existed then as well as now, in the rocky bottom 

 over which the animals were transported,) by the action of the 

 water continually entering into and returning from them ; for 

 the returning water would not " have equal power upon the 

 bodies with the entering water," and consequently would leave 

 the bodies behind. " So that when the soil was not sufficiently 

 soft to receive them, they would be driven forward and finally 

 urged into the inmost recesses of the caverns, where they 

 would afterwards be found in confused multitudinous and 

 exposed masses, with all the circumstances which thev now 

 exhibit. And, because they would have been fixedly lodged 

 before their skeletons were stripped of their integuments, and 

 because the sea presently abandoned them, no appearance of 

 trituration would be discoverable in the bones." . , . ., 



The whole human race, with the exception of a single family, 

 is stated by the sacred record to have perished with the brute 

 creation. Why then have not human bones been found in a 

 fossil state, as well as those of elephants and other animals ? 

 • The mineral geology has suggested the answer. 



The ulace which raan then inhabited may have sunk into the abyss, and 

 the bones of that destroyed race may yet remain buried under the bottom 

 of some actual sea. 



The brute creation, without reflection and forethought, con- 

 gre<^ate together by instinct when alarmed, and await in trepi- 

 datmn the unknown evil. These, therefore, by the sudden 

 subsidencies of the land on the spots where they chanced to be 

 assembled, would have been surprised by the successive inunda- 

 tions, and carried away by the reflux of their waters. But the 

 human race seeing the threatened danger coming on them, 

 would retreat from the flood, gradually advancing on all sides, 

 and draw more and more towards the centre of the continually 

 diminishing circle, until, assembled in a multitudinous mass on 

 the last remaining portion of dry land, they would on its sub- 

 sidence be absorbed by the vortex occasioned by the conflux of 

 the two seas meeting from the opposite hemispheres, and thus 

 be carried down with violence into the depths of the new sea; 

 «' where their exuviae must remain for ever uninvestigabie by 

 man." Moral considerations strengthen the probability that 

 this was the course of that tremendous event, for the sufferings 

 of the condemned and hardened race were thus protracted by 

 their endeavours to escape from the catastrophe, till they had 

 worked their destined efiects. 



A similar moral reflection will furnish us with a sufficient 



