CLIMATOLOGICAL ZONES. 



lity. No such condition of fossil deposits, however, is observed, 

 those of the highest latitudes being as decidedly tropical as those 

 of the lowest. 



563. The formation of downs, littoral deposits, the filling up of 

 lagoons, and the conversion of deltas into tracts of land, are 

 severally contemporaneous geological phenomena, which serve, by 

 the rate of their progress, and by their cumulative effects, as a 

 sort of natural chronometers, by which the age of the human 

 race, and its contemporary fauna, may be approximately esti- 

 mated ; and it is as remarkable as it is satisfactory, that the 

 results are in no degree of discordance with the dates of Creation 

 supplied by chronology, based on tradition and revelation. By 

 the general accordance of such facts, it appears that the present 

 period has now continued for not more than six or seven thousand 

 years. 



564. After all that has been explained of the series of convul- 

 sions which terminated the succession of periods in the history of 

 the earth, it will be evident that the Mosaic narrative of the 

 Deluge contains nothing incompatible with that course of events, 

 which may be said, without exaggeration, to have been of 

 habitual occurrence on our planet. Whether the Deluge be 

 identified with the catastrophe which produced the system of 

 Tamarus or be ascribed to other convulsions, such as extensive 

 earthquakes, is immaterial, so far as respects the mere credibility of 

 the narrative. It is worthy of remark also, that the Mosaic narrative 

 is in accordance with national tradition among various peoples. 



565. As to the future, all inference must be based upon analogy 

 with the past. During a succession of eight or nine and twenty 

 periods, we have seen that creation after creation has taken place. 

 Assemblage after assemblage of animated beings have peopled 

 the earth, which has been clothed and re-clothed with vegetation 

 for their well-being. Upon the close of period after period, it 

 has pleased the Most High, in his inscrutable wisdom, to doom 

 such animated worlds to sudden destruction, attaining His purpose 

 by the secondary agency of geological convulsions. The existing 

 animated world presents nothing which can take it out of the cate- 

 gory of the past, or exempt it from the ultimate fate which an 

 inexorable law has prescribed to all former creations. The earth is 

 still subject to the same local oscillations of its crust, whether con- 

 tinual and gradual, or violent and sudden, as heretofore. Volcanic 

 phenomena declare, in unequivocal language, that the heaving* of 

 the internal fluid and incandescent matter have lost none of their 

 terrific energy. Not only, therefore, does nothing justify the 

 supposition that the convulsion which raised the chain of the 

 great Alps, and destroyed the fauna and flora of the fifth 



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