53 



1824.] the Formation of the Kirhdale Cave. 



If the waters of the deluge placed a bed of calcareous 

 matter on England and Germany, they must have done so over 

 the entire earth. It must have been an universal stratum. 



Yet so total was the deficiency of it at Botany bay, that the 

 first settlers, for the very little lime which a few structures of 

 immediate necessity required, were compelled, though spare as 

 were the hands, and much as they were wanted tor other 

 purposes, laboriously and tediously, to collect shells along the 

 beach. Where a limestone nodule was so anxiously sought and 

 could not be found, great strata could not be near. 



But the sediment of the deluge waters would not be mere 

 calcareous matter. It must have consisted of everything which 

 they could receive, suspend, and deposit. 



If over the earth were spread such a layer of mire, JNoan 

 and the animals could not have landed upon it. Or had they 

 not sunk into it and been smothered ; where yet had the weak 

 found refuge from the voracious ; where had the herbivorous 



found food 1 . 



What a time must have elapsed before Noah could cultivate 

 the vine ' Nor is it from such a soil that the wine would have 

 intoxicated the holy Patriarch. Had things so been, Ham 

 never had offended, nor Canaan incurred the fatal curse. 



Sinking of the Bodies into the Mud. 

 Supposing, however, such a bed of " soft and plastic" 

 calcareous matter deposited by the waters on England, the im- 

 mersion of the bodies into it is of no small difficulty. 



Animal bodies bloated with gas from decay, which Water 

 had " floated on its surface," are not easily conceived to have 

 displaced a stony powder of a specific gravity of 2-7, and to 

 have fallen below it. . . 



" Turbulent vortices," which are imagined to have lent ttieir 

 aid on the occasion, would have disseminated the clustered 

 animals, and dispersed the powdery stratum. 



That the bodies should in every case have descended into 

 the calcareous pulp, in one unbroken group ; that in none a 

 fragment, even a lock of hair, should have parted from the 

 putrid mass, and stopped by the way, cannot certainly plead 

 probability in its favour. Yet what cabinet shows even the lalcin* 

 derest bone of a water-rat bedded in the solid stone ? What 

 limestone stratum has astonished the learned, by presenting 

 them, in its substance, with an antediluvian hyena's bristles, 



or lion's mane ? 



Formation of the Cave. 



If the limestone pulp was too thin, the gas would pass 

 through it and escape, and the pulp fall back upon the bodi 

 if too°thick, the elastic force of Ihe gas would be insufficieni 

 to repel it from them. A precise point of InavrratlOT, it 



