SO . II. RELICS. Introduction 



a transportation of vegetable bodies from the land to 



the Mosaic account of that event. Regular stratification can only 

 have been tlie effect of regular and long continued depositions ; 

 and such could not have taken place during a ten-mouth's flood, 

 even admitting it to have been universal. It has been assumed, 

 however, to obviate the force of the objection, that, on the gene- 

 ral subsidence of the deluge, a portion of its waters would remain 

 in various excavated parts of the continents, and there form exten- 

 sive lakes or inland-seas : and that, in these lakes have been gra- 

 dually deposited^ not only the strata now under consideration 

 (viz. those in which a mixture of sea-shells and vegetable remains 

 occur) but also many of those productive of coal, in which no ad- 

 mixture of marine exuviae are found. The hypothesis is ingenious, 

 and undoubtedly not inconsistent with the structure and general 

 appearances attendant on coal-strata, which frequently indicate 

 their formation to have been carried on, in the depressions or hollow 

 parts of more ancient strata. We cannot, however, acceed to the 

 conclusion, that the water, once filling such depressions, must have 

 originated from the general deluge. According to sacred history, 

 the full development of the animal kingdom, as well as of the ve- 

 getable, had taken place long before the period, in which they were 

 equally involved in one general inundation. And hence, in strata 

 supposed to have been formed by depositions from water left by 

 the deluge, not only, might we reasonably expect to find vegetable 

 and marine relics, but also, the remains of land-animals, of quad- 

 rupeds for instance, and even of man himself. For, however 

 small a proportion the destroyed land-animals bore, among the ge- 

 neral multitude of organic bodies overwhelmed by this catastrophe, 

 as they did exist, and as the bones of quadrupeds are certainly 

 as liable to subsidence in water, as drifted timber, or other vegeta- 

 ble matter, they, no doubt, would occasionally be met with, in the 

 strata in question, if such strata had really originated from the cause 

 assigned in the hypothesis. But, on the contrary, it is an indubi- 

 table fact, that neither the remains of man, nor of quadruped, have 



