X 

 GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES 



IN the days when geology was young, now some two 

 hundred years ago, it found a careful foster-mother 

 in theology, who watched over its early growth with 

 anxious solicitude, and stored its receptive mind with 

 the most beautiful stories, which the young science never 

 tired of transforming into curious fancies of its own, 

 which it usually styled " theories of the earth." 



Of these, one of the most famous in its day and 

 generation was that of Thomas Burnett, published in 

 1684, in a work of great learning and eloquence. Samuel 

 Pepys, of diary fame, is said to have found great delight 

 in it, and it is still possible to turn to it with interest 

 when jaded with the more romantic fiction of our 

 own day. 



It was the fashion to commence these theories with 

 chaos, and chaos (Fig. 83), according to Thomas 

 Burnett, was a disorderly mixture of particles of earth, 

 air, and water, floating in space ; it was without 

 form, yet not without a centre, a centre, indeed, 

 of gravity, towards which the scattered particles began 

 to fall, but the grosser, on account of " their more 

 lumpish nature," fell more quickly than the rest, and 

 reaching the centre first accumulated about it in a 



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