10 



suited to their habits of life and capacities, must have 

 existed. 



If coming nearer, in supposition, to our own times, 

 we see evidences of ungovernable floods of water hav- 

 inor rushed in manv directions, rollino^- frao:ments of 

 rocks into globes, again reducing them to gra^^el, again 

 cutting Grooves into granite — if we see remains of ani- 

 mals of vast physical powers, whose existence could 

 be safely subjected to an atmosphere of intense tem- 

 perature, and then, after their races- had becom'e ex- 

 tinct, we see the first proofs of man's appearance on the 

 earth, can it be called a wild mental scheme to assert, 

 that in different times and places, the earth was sub- 

 jected to a deluge of water ; that physical life gradu- 

 ally declined as a cooler atmosphere and other cir- 

 cumstances combined, to prepare the way for a more 

 intellectual being. 



Lastly, — if reviewing all these- things we find no- 

 thing lost amidst the revolutions of earth ; if* lead, sul- 

 phur, mercury, zinc, volatilized, or rising into vapor 

 and floating in air, through the influence of heat, have 

 on the cooling of the atmosphere, been precipitated on 

 the earth, and by flei-y eruptions ejected in veins 

 throughout the crust of the globe ; if fires or other 

 causes, have raised up the mouths of these veins to ex- 

 hibit their treasures and invite the labor of man ; if gi- 

 gantic vegetation, produced by superabundant heat, 

 and moisture, instead of being suffered to rot and pol- 

 lute the ataiosphere, has been pressed down by super- 

 incumbent masses, and, by the slow action of suppress- 

 ed fires, consumed into coal; if animal matter, instead of 

 sending forth, in dying, putrescent vapors, has been 

 changed to saltpetre, bitumen, and other substances ; if 



