GEOLOGY. 36 



ins of the old world. Well might he, who wrote our only 

 short history of the deluge, declare, that "the foundations of 

 the great deep were broken up." We throw out a suggestion, 

 for the consideration and reflection of our readers. 



If we suppose quite the largest portion of our globe to be 

 water, and we have no reasons to come to any other conclu- 

 sion (if we except to opinions, without proof, and even contra- 

 ry to all evidence) and, that the eastern and western contin- 

 ents and their islandic appendages, lie in the waters of the 

 ocean, like two icebergs in the sea, it is easy enough to under- 

 stand, that whenever, and by whatever means, the centre of 

 gravity is lost which now keeps these continents exactly where 

 they are, a revolution of these continents will take place al- 

 most instantly. By this catastrophe, the earth would be swept 

 of all its land animals, who would all perish, except such as 

 happened to be on the earth where the two new poles would 

 be formed, at the moment when the event happened. 



If all the rivers and all the currents in the ocean also, run in 

 the same direction, not only every sea, and every ocean, but 

 every river, every brook, and every rill, and even every show- 

 er of either rain, snow or hail — nay every dew would hasten 

 on another grand catastrophe of this globe. But the rivers do 

 not all run in the same, but opposite directions. The Red 

 River of Hudson's Bay runs northwardly, the Mississippi and 

 its branches southwardly. The waters of the northern lakes 

 move northeastwardly — and the current in the ocean along our 

 Atlantic coast runs in the same direction. The streams issuing 

 from the bases of the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, 

 run in opposite directions. Wherever mountain streams are 

 shorter in their courses on one side of a mountain, than on the 

 other side, their descent is greater than the rivers on the op- 

 posite side of their common sources ; and the shorter rivers bear 

 along in their currents an equal weight of matter with the 

 longer and larger rivers. This is true, probably, of all the 

 rivers in the world, but where it is not so, a current in an adja- 

 cent ocean makes up the deficiency. We have been long since 



