1824.] the Formation of the Kirkdale Cave. 59 



their inhabitants, with an infinity of things to their use, would 

 remain. Every limestone quarry should daily present us with 

 some of these most precious of all antiquities, before which 

 those of Italy and Egypt would shrink to nothing. 



How greatly must we regret that this is not the case, that we 

 must relinquish the delightful hope of some day finding in the 

 body of a calcareous mountain, the city of Enoch built by Cain, 

 at the very origin of the world, with what awful sentiments had 

 not present generations contemplated objects which once had 

 been looked upon by eyes which had seen the divinity ! 



The other great fact which forcibly militates against the dilu- 

 vian hypothesis is, that the fossil animals are not those which 

 existed at the time of the deluge. The diluvian species must 

 have been the same as the present. The multifarious wonders 

 of the ark had for sole object their preservation ; while of the 

 fossil kinds, not perhaps one, or quadruped, or bird, or fish, 

 or shell, or insect, or plant, is now alive. 



" Amazing proofs of inundations at high levels " are appealed 

 to. Had they being, of the deluge they could at most speak but 

 to the existence ; on its influence in the contested cases, they 

 would be silent ; but it appears that this stupendous prodigy, 



" Like the baseless fabric of a vision, 

 Left not a wreck behind." 



Of the occurrence of marine depositions at great altitudes, the 

 elevation of the stratum by volcanic efforts, furnishes a far more 

 easy solution than the elevation of the sea, as it refers the phe- 

 nomenon to a natural cause, and does not require the immediate 

 interposition of the divine hand ; and the ruptured state and 

 erect position of the strata on all these occasions, testify strongly 

 in favour of the simpler supposition. 



To collate the revered volume with the great book of nature, 

 and show in their agreement one author to both, was an under- 

 taking worthy of the union of piety and science. If the result 

 has not been what was anticipated ; if we look in vain over the 

 face of our globe for those mighty impressions of an universal 

 deluge, which reason tells us that it must have produced and left 

 behind itself, to some cause as out of the natural course of 

 things as was that event, must this doubtless be attributed. 



By his entering into a covenant with man and brute animals, 

 and having for ever " set his bow in the cloud," as a token that 

 the direful scene should never be renewed, the Creator appears 

 to have repined at the severity of his justice. 



The spectacle of a desolated world, — of fertility laid waste, — 

 of the painful works of industry and genius overthrown, — of 

 infantine innocence involved in indiscriminate misery with the 

 hardened offender, — of brute nature whose want of reason pre- 

 cluded it from the possibility of all offence, made share in the 



