322 GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES 



but for nine years he laboured in vain ; a fresh engineer, 

 named Yu, was therefore called in ; within eight years he 

 completed great works ; he thinned the woods, regulated 

 the streams, dammed them, and opened their mouths, 

 provided the people with food, and acted as a great 

 benefactor to the State. 



It is refreshing thus to pass from the ornate deceptions 

 of legend to the sober truth of history ; and if the facts on 

 which the Gizdubar legend of the deluge is founded could 

 be expressed in the same simple language, we should 

 probably find it narrating similar events, or events as 

 little likely to excite surprise as those of the straight- 

 forward Chinese Schu. 



History, then, fails to furnish evidence of any phenome- 

 non which can be called catastrophic in the geologic sense 

 of the word, and geology has no need to return to the 

 catastrophism of its youth ; in becoming evolutional it 

 does not cease to remain essentially uniformitarian. 



And the careful foster-mother ? She too, as it appears 

 to me, has widened her studies, and must, I should think, 

 recognise with pride the stalwart growth of her early 

 friend. May they be drawn nearer together, and feel the 

 warm glow which is produced by the sympathy of a 

 common love for truth. 



