FOSSIL SHELLS. 199 
been neither slow nor gradual, especially in the 
instance of the last; and that the momentous era of 
the Deluge, is not only confirmed by the history of 
all nations, but indelibly recorded on the surface of 
the globe. He further demontrates, that the break- 
ing up of the waters of the great deep, and.the open- 
ing of the flood-gates of heaven, as recorded in the 
book of Genesis, cannot be referred to a more remote 
period than is assigned by the sacred historian; a 
fact, undoubtedly, the best established, though perhaps 
the least attended to, of any in geology, notwith- 
standing its importance, as connecting natural and 
civil history in an uninterrupted series. Hence it is 
evident, that at this eventful era, when every thing 
of human origin was swallowed up in the great 
waters; cities and palaces, majestic pyramids, and 
perhaps triumphal arches, embellished with the 
trophies of ancient kings!—when there remained 
on the earth no traces of the glory, or felicity of the 
antediluvian race; but all was swept away! and not 
only these, but the still more splendid monuments 
of nature’s greatness involved in one common ruin ; 
innumerable mementos of this event were impressed 
on the clay, and still subsist, as memorials of that 
devastation: relics of a primeval world, which pro- 
claim with a loud voice the instability of earthly 
affairs, and impress upon the minds of those who 
