Uniformity of Climate prior to the Deluge. 367 



tribution over the globe of a climate, resembling tliat in the 

 present tropical regions, are met with not only in the formations 

 of the secondary period, but also in those of later periods. Mo- 

 nocotyledonous trees, "which are of but rare occurrence on the 

 southern boundary of the temperate zone, are found in a fossil 

 state not only in the strata immediately associated with the chalk 

 formation, but also in the beds of brown coal, and other strata 

 of the tertiary class ; and, although the numerous groupes of 

 animal remains hitherto found in these formations have the 

 greatest affinity to those animals which at present inhabit the 

 seas and lands of lower latitudes, it is certainly no slight proof 

 of the former distribution of one and the same climate over the 

 whole earth, when, in coeval formations, we find the same fos- 

 sil remains in widely different degrees of latitude. This, it is 

 alleged, has been verified by observation. The same (or very 

 nearly allied) organic remains, as those of the tertiary and 

 diluvial strata of the basins of Paris and London, of the sub- 

 Appenine hills, and of the shores of the Baltic, have been, we are 

 told, recently observed in the same kind of strata on the banks of 

 the Irrawadda in the Birman Empire, in the neighbourhood of 

 the Brahmaputra in Bengal, and in Jamaica. 



In conclusion, we need only cast a glance at the acknowledged 

 locality of some of the extinct gigantic pachydermata, as the ele- 

 phant, rhinoceros, &c., to be convinced, that, in the period of 

 creation immediately preceding our own, there may have ex- 

 isted, on both shores of the Atlantic Ocean, to a distance ex- 

 tending from the mouth of the Lena, in 70° north latitude, to 

 the tropic, a climate at least very analogous to that in the pre- 

 sent tropical regions. From the preceding and other well 

 known facts, we may venture to infer, that it was after the 

 Deluge., that there first appeared those differences of climate 

 which we were unable to shew had existed at any prior period ; 

 and that this event took place with such fearful rapidity that 

 the inhabitants of the tro[)ical woods and savannahs of Siberia 

 were preserved uninjured, with till their tender parts, enclosed in 

 tlie ice of the Arctic Sea. 



H N. 



