GEOLOGY. 317 



The etymology of the name Deucalion, from deuteros, the second, 

 and kaleo, to call, imports the recalling of society a second time in- 

 to existence under the patriarch Noah. It was usual with ancient 

 nations to give new names to princes, expressive of auspicious 

 events ; a custom not yet wholly discontinued. The landing of 

 Deucalion with his wife on Mount Parnassus is but a confusion of 

 the tradition concerning the resting of the ark on Mount Ararat. 

 The deluge not only covered both these mountains, but has left 

 stratifications on all the higher mountains, as far as the snow will 

 allow us to ascend. In Switzerland, Count de Saussure asserts, 

 that marine petrifactions are not found higher than two thousand 

 eight hundred feet, (equivalent to about three thousand English 

 feet,) above the level of the sea, and in caverns sometimes to the 

 depth of twelve hundred feet; yet there the summits of the hills ex- 

 hibit the desolations of the waters in characters which command 

 universal assent. 



The moral cause of this unexampled catastrophe is wholly attri- 

 buted by the Hebrew historian to the great and incorrigible wick- 

 edness of the antediluvians. And what could be more agreeable to 

 the Divine perfections, when the apostacy was total ; when all flesh 

 had corrupted its way ; when the sons of the great seized the daugh- 

 ters of the poor : when the earth was filled with violence ; when 

 the prophesying and translation of Enoch had no effect; when the 

 preaching of Noah, and the building of the ark excited scoffing 

 rather than reformation ; what could be more agreeable to the per- 

 fections of God, than to save the one righteous family, and wash 

 away the filthy inhabitants of the earth ? 



The physical cause is attributed by Dr. Halley, and two or three 

 other astronomers, to the near approach of a comet towards the 

 earth, which, Mr. Whiston thinks, descended on the plane of the 

 ecliptic. To these suppositions real difficulties may be opposed, 

 which seem insuperable. Why has not the same comet returned, 

 and often returned, in so great a lapse of time ? Why are the 

 strata of alluvial earth found too numerous to agree with the num- 

 ber of tides which could take place during the short time that the 

 earth could remain in the neighborhood of a comet ? Nor should 

 it escape remark, that a man, who calmly investigates the bounds 

 prescribed to the ocean, and the precision of gravity in the flux and 

 reflux of the sea, can never be brought to believe that the prodi- 

 gious tides which ravaged the old world could be attracted to over- 

 flow the hills, without a special command from the God of nature. 



The elder Rabbins, mostly followed by the, Christian fathers, 

 commenting on those words of Moses, ' The fountains of the great 

 deep were broken up,' suppose an eruption of latent waters, which 

 covered the earth's surface to the elevation of the mountains. But 

 such an elevation, instead of stratifying the earth, as we now find 

 it, would only harden its surface by an immense pressure. When 

 a spring tide retires, we every where find the sands so closed by 

 the pressure of not more than forty feet of water, as scarcely to be 



