316 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



Noah. It is a fact, demonstrated by the study of nature, and con- 

 firmed by innumerable experiments of chemistry, that the same 

 aluminous warp of the sea would, on one soil, form marble, on an- 

 other gypsum, on another alum, rocks, &c. but generally would re- 

 main in schistusand clays, when reposed on the more neutral bases 

 of rocks and sands. 



The striations, in alluvial marbles, which cut one another ob- 

 liquely, and form the mass into diamonds, appear to have been 

 Ibrmed by the action of the sun upon the shores during the neap 

 tides. The warp on mud has been observed to dry and break into 

 oblique fissures ; the upper surface to break into diamonds, as in 

 marble columns, and become considerably indurated by the solar 

 heat. These fissures, though filled up by the next spring tide, 

 would not be so closed as to exclude the pores and channels of the 

 water; and waters continuing to pass, would form the white, or 

 the mineral streaks of the marble, as is farther demonstrated by the 

 hollow stalactites pendant from the roof of caverns, and of ruins; 

 by the quartose veins in schistus or blue slate ; and by the rapid 

 manner in which vegetables are changed to stone, in petrifying 

 wells. Also where the mineral fluids and marine acids predomi- 

 nated in those clays, they would curdle and variegate the marble 

 tints as they now appear, in all the variety of dappled hues. The 

 waters of the ocean have, in many places, the power of producing 

 ^ coral petrifactions to a very great extent. Sir Hans Sloane reports 

 of a ship sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, containing silver, that after 

 thirty years, on coming to dive for the treasure, they found the out- 

 side and inside of the ship, and all the spaces between the chests 

 so encrusted with a coral matter, and so extremely hard, as to be 

 difficult to break. 



Consequently, the waters thus descending from the summit of 

 mountains to depths which no miner can penetrate ; and repeating 

 in the fissures and cavities of the primitive earth to the time of the 

 deluge, all the formations of nature, and still continuing to do the 

 same, must make men cautious of objecting to the Mosaic history, 

 because the alluvial impressions of vegetable and animal fossils oft- 

 en exist in rocks and mountains accounted primitive. 



We now proceed to notice the desolations, changes, and new 

 formations which the universal deluge effectuated on the surface 

 and upper strata of the earth. 



Of the event itself, we are assured beyond the possibility of a 

 doubt. We have no difficulty in proving it, except from a super- 

 abundance of proof. It is asserted, both by sacred and profane his- 

 torians, how disguised and disfigured soever the latter accounts may 

 be. Plutarch, in his book on the industry of animals, mentions 

 both the ark and the dove. The account Ovid has given of the 

 flood, in the reign of Deucalion, which drowned all Thessalia, and 

 from which the king and his wife were saved on Mount Parnas- 

 sus, seems to be a confused tradition between the deluge of Noah, 

 and a partial inundation. 



