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II. Rejections on the Noackian Deluge, and on the Attempts 

 lately made nt Oxford, for connecting the same tuith present 

 Geological Appearances. By A CouREspOi\DENT. 



To Mr. Tilloch. 



Sir, — X AM one of those, who, without surrendering my Rea- 

 son to the Priests of any of the ahnost innumerable Sects, whose 

 selfish interests, so frequently oppose them bitterly to each other, 

 delight, not only generally " to look through Nature up to na- 

 ture's God," but in a particular manner to do so, through the 

 grand and highly impressive phtEnomena, which Geological re- 

 search has brought to light, and in considerable degrees explained, 

 since about the year 1792, when our ingenious and deserving, 

 although hitherto much neglected countryman, Mr.// w. Smith of 

 Mitford, began his practical investigations of the Strata of our 

 Island, and of the astonishing number and variety of the Organic 

 Remains, with which its Strata are enriched, and as to the Alluvia 

 which covers those Strata: and which Remains were, by his sa- 

 gacity and perseverance, /or the first time, so far as my Reading 

 extends, made vsefnl, as without doubt their beneficent Author 

 intended them, in promoting and extending the knowledge of 

 Man, into much of those subficial parts of the Earth, with which, 

 before the Era alluded to, he was little acquainted, to any correct 

 or useful purpose, and for extending his views of the early his- 

 tory, of the more superficial parts of the mass, of the Globe which 

 he inhabits. 



I have been induced to make the above remarks, from having 

 just perused Professor Buckland's "Inaugural Lecture," delivered 

 in May 1819, at Oxford, and observed, that he therein labours to 

 prolong those errors and delusions, respecting the eiiide7ices, which 

 Geological phrevdmcna were so confidently said to present or 

 afford, of the occurrence and circumstances attending theMosaic 

 Deluge. 



I remember having seen Mr. Bakewell commended in your 

 Work, for having in the year IS 13 abstained, from introducing 

 the Deluge of Moses into his " Introduction to Geology," as the 

 previous Writers had almost invariably done, to the manifest 

 injury of Geology on the one hand, and of Religion on the 

 other: since which, the practice ha* almost entirely grown into 

 disuse, while the number of writers on Geological subjects, have 

 been greatly on tiie increase ; and I regret therefore to see, the 

 new Geological Professor at Oxford, attempting now to revive 

 the exploded notion, that any of the phaenomena at this time 

 visible, on or within the Earth, are, with any proper regard to 

 probability, referable to the Deluge of which Moses writes. 



It 



