13 A HISTORY OF 



to the great abyss of waters ; and the whole earth, in a manner, fell 

 in. Then ensued a total disorder in the uniform beauty of the first 

 creation, the terrene surface of the globe being broken down ; as it 

 sunk the waters gushed out into its place ; the deluge became univer- 

 sal ; all mankind, except eight persons, were destroyed, and their posr 

 ferity condemned to toil upon the ruins of desolated nature." 



It only remains to mention the manner in which he relieves the 

 earth from this universal wreck, which would seem to be as difficult a 

 even its first formation : " These great masses of earth falling into the 

 abyss, drew down with them vast quantities also of air ; and, by dash- 

 ing against each other, and breaking into small parts by the repeated 

 violence of the shock, they, at length, left between them large cavities, 

 filled with nothing but air. These cavities naturally offered a bed to re- 

 ceive the influent waters ; and in proportion as they filled, the face of the 

 earth became once more visible. The higher parts of its broken sur- 

 face, now become the tops of the mountains, were the first that ap- 

 peared ; the plains soon after came forward, and, at length, the whole 

 globe was delivered from the waters, except the places in the lowest 

 situations ; so that the ocean and the seas are still a part of the ancient 

 abyss, that have not had a place to return. Islands and rocks are 

 fragments of the earth's former crust ; kingdoms and continents are 

 larger masses of its broken substance ; and all the inequalities that are 

 to be found on the surface of the present earth, are owing to the acci- 

 dental confusion into which both earth and waters were then thrown." 



The next theorist was Woodward, who, in his Essay towards a 

 Natural History of the Earth, which was only designed to precede a 

 greater work, has endeavoured to give a more rational account of its 

 appearance; and was, in fact, much better furnished for such an un- 

 dertaking than any of his predecessors, being one of the roost assidu- 

 ous naturalists of his time. His little book, therefore, contains many 

 important facts, relative to natural history, although his system may be 

 weak and groundless. 



He begins by asserting that all terrene substances are disposed in 

 beds of various natures, lying horizontally one over the other, some- 

 what like the coats of an onion : that they are replete with shells, and 

 ither productions of the sea; these shells being found in the deepest 

 "iivities, and on the tops of the highest mountains. From these obser- 

 vations, which are warranted by experience, he proceeds to observe, 

 that these shells and extraneous fossils are not productions of the earth, 

 but are all actual remains of those animals which they are known to 

 resemble; that all the beds of the earth lie under each other, in the 

 order of their specific gravity ; and that they are disposed as if they 

 had been left there by subsiding waters. All these assertions he af- 

 firms with much earnestness, although daily experience contradict* 

 him in some of them ; particularly we find layers of stone often over 

 the lightest soils, and the softest earth under the hardest bodies. How- 

 ever, having taken it for granted, that all the layers of the earth are 

 found in the order of their specific gravity, the lightest at the top, and 

 the heaviest next the centre, he consequently asserts, and it will not 

 improbably follow, that all the substances of which the earth is com- 

 posed were once in an actual state of dissolution. This universal clis 



