THE MOSAIC DELUGE. 



;orty days' rain of such. violence as the ordinary state of the globe 

 can give us no idea. 



Notwithstanding all its strangeness, we have stated the theory 

 histon in detail, both on account of the celebrity which it has 

 so long enjoyed, as well as because of the consideration due to the 

 man whom Newton himself designed as his successor in the 

 University of Cambridge ; yet the following are objections which 

 it seems his theory cannot resist. 



^Vhiston having required an immense tide to explain the 

 mystery of the biblical phenomena of the great deep, was not 

 content to pass his comet extremely near the earth at the moment 

 of the deluge : he has, moreover, given it a very great magnitude, 

 in supposing it six times greater than the moon. 



Such a supposition is completely gratuitous, but this is its least 

 fault ; for it is not sufficient to account for the phenomena. If the 

 moon produces a tide on the waters of the ocean, it is because its 

 angular diurnal motion is not very considerable ; that in the space 

 of some hours its distance from the earth scarcely varies ; during 

 a considerable time it remains vertically over almost the same 

 points of the globe ; the fluid which it attracts has therefore always 

 time to yield to its action before it moves to a region where the 

 force which emanates from it will be otherwise directed. But it 

 was not the same with the comet of 1680. Near to the earth, its 

 apparent angular motion must have been extremely rapid ; in a 

 few minutes it corresponded with a numerous series of points 

 situated on terrestrial meridians very distant from each other. 

 As to its rectilinear distance from the earth, it might, without 

 doubt, have been very small, but only during a few instants. The 

 union of these circumstances, it must be observed, was but little 

 favourable to the production of a great tide. 



It is true that, to diminish these difficulties, it is sufficient to 

 increase the comet to make its mass not only six times the size 

 of the moon, but thirty or forty times larger : but the comet of 

 1680-does not afford that latitude. On the 1st of November in 

 that year it passed very near to the earth. It is shown that at 

 the period of the deluge its distance was not less ; then, as in 1680 

 it produced neither celestial cataracts, nor terrestrial tides, nor 

 ruptures of the great deep ; as, moreover, its train nor its nebu- 

 losity did not inundate us, we may in all confidence say that 

 Whiston's theory is a mere romance, unless, in abandoning the 

 comet of 1680, we venture to attribute the same effect to another 

 much more considerable object of the same description. 



In fine, we must observe that, even the argument of Wniston, 

 based upon the apparent equality of the supposed successive 

 appearances, from which he deduces a period of 574 or 575 years 



