WRITINGS OP JAMES SMITHSON. 115 



ered the waters ; they must have formed a material part, if 

 not the principal one, of every group, and human bones be 

 now consequently met with everywhere blended with those 

 of animals. 



Objects of human industry and skill must likewise con- 

 tinually occur among the bones. Of the miserable victims 

 of the disaster numbers would be clothed, and have on their 

 persons articles of the most imperishable materials; and 

 the dog would retain his collar, the horse his bit and har- 

 ness, the ox his yoke. To men who wrought iron and 

 bronze, who manufactured harps and organs, these things 

 must have been familiar. 



But more ; embalmed within the substance of the dilu- 

 vian mud, entire cities, with their monuments, with a great 

 part of 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 antiqui- 

 ties, 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 

 diluvian 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 mul- 

 tifarious wonders of the ark had for sole object their pres- 

 ervation ; 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 their existence ; on its influence in the 



