140 Rev. Mr Smith on a Submarine Forest. 



once into the ocean to a certain extent, seems more consistent 

 with the present appearances ; and we may conceive, that thus 

 suddenly conveyed into the bed of the ocean, its waters would 

 prove much less destructive to the moss-lands in rolling smooth- 

 ly over them, than they would do, if they lashed against a bank 

 composed of such a perishable material. Whether or not this 

 depression was owing to the agency of central heat, producing a 

 general system of elevation and depression over the whole globe, 

 as formerly advocated by Lazoro Moro, Hutton, and his elo- 

 quent illustrator, and now revived and supported with many 

 important facts by M. L. Cordier, it might be presumption in 

 me to say ; but I should certainly conceive, from a long and mi- 

 nute investigation of the subject, that this is the supposition with 

 which the facts are most consistent. 



In concluding this paper, which has already been too much 

 extended, I may be allowed to remark, that, as to the era in 

 which such a depression may have happened, nothing can pro- 

 bably be determined. In a conversation which I had in 1825 

 with Mr Webster of the Geological Society of London, he told 

 me that he had found a hazel-tree, with ripe nuts attached to it, 

 sunk in diluvial soil, and exposed by the action of the waves on 

 the shore of the Isle of Man ; and that he considered this cir- 

 cumstance as a proof of the correctness of the Mosaic account 

 of the season in which the deluge recorded in the Bible oc- 

 curred. But the seeds and nuts found in these submarine fo- 

 rests, though they speak to us of autumn, do not carry us back 

 to an era so remote — nor does the Biblical account require their 

 aid. The sceptic has seized upon many strong posts, and been 

 regularly forced to abandon them. He has tried to extend the 

 world into a past eternity, but the cypherings of time derided 

 him ; —he has endeavoured to build unto himself a fortress in 

 metaphysical inquiry and purely abstract speculation, but, in 

 the abandonment of reality, his baseless fabrics have fallen and 

 perished ; — he has struggled to secure to himself a place in the 

 bowels of the earth, but they have ejected him, even the caves, 

 the rocks, and the mountains, have refused to cover him ; and, 

 therefore, the beUever may walk into the fields, knowing that 



the Book of Nature, with its grandeur and its boauty, speaks to 



2 



