WRITINGS OF JAMES SMITHSON. 107 



final departure, not a vestige of it could possibly have re- 

 mained behind. 



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 struc- 

 tures of immediate necessity required, were compelled, 

 though spare as were the hands, and much as they were 

 wanted for other purposes, laboriously and tediously, to col- 

 lect 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, Noah 

 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 ? 



What a time must have elapsed before Noah could culti- 

 vate 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 

 immersion 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 



