178 LIFE ON THE EARTH, 



CATACLYSMS. 



Sufficient as they were, and satisfactory as they 

 ought to have been, these arguments against the 

 diluvial origin of the ' figured stones,' did not 

 prevent the adoption of it by many writers who 

 had gained the right faith in regard to their 

 nature and origin. Woodward, the great founder of 

 the Chair, which has been so worthily filled by 

 Mitchell and Sedgwick, who ransacked the British 

 Islands for fossils, and devoted all his mind to 

 " observation of the present state of the earth, and 

 of the site and condition of the marine bodies which 

 are lodged in and upon it," adopts the hypothesis 

 which Plot rejected, to account for phenomena which 

 that author had not rightly valued. His Natural 

 History of the Earth (1695), contains these propo- 

 sitions and reflections: 



1. 'That the marine bodies were borne forth of 

 the sea by the universal deluge; and that upon the 

 return of the water back again from off the earth, 

 they were left behind at land. 7 



2. 'That during the time of the deluge, whilst 

 the water was out upon and covered the terrestrial 

 globe, all the stone and marble of the antediluvian 

 earth ; all the metals of it ; all mineral concretions ; 

 and in a word all fossils whatever that had before 



