164 Natural History, 



and free from hills and valleys. The sun and 

 moon were afterwards created. The fluid which 

 covered the mud became agitated by the flux and 

 reflux, to which it was subjected by attraction, and 

 the mud was variously and violently moved. This 

 agitation increasing, part of the mud became ex- 

 posed, and dried. Continents were thus formed. 

 The materials of the earth being compact and 

 solid, the sea continually excavated its bed; and 

 from the continual retreat of the sea, and the ex- 

 cavation of the earth, this globe is doomed to be 

 at last so perfectly undermined as to produce a 

 confluence of the sea from hemisphere to hemis- 

 phere. The earth becoming thus hollow, and its 

 shell being gradually extenuated, will, at length, 

 fall to pieces; a new chaos will be formed; the 

 fabric will be again revived, as at first; and a pe- 

 riodical dissolution and renovation will take place. 

 ' — Le Cat professed to believe the sacred scrip- 

 tures, and discovered an anxious desire to show 

 that his theory w^as consistent with them; but the 

 best judges among his contemporaries, and since 

 that period, have pronounced it equally inconsistent 

 with the structure and phenomena of our globe, 

 and with the Mosaic history. 



About the year 1750 appeared the Telliamed of 

 M. Maillet, a French writer of some note. He 

 taught, that the earth w^as once wholly covered 

 with water, w^hich, by means of strong currents, 

 raised in its bosom all those mountains which dif- 

 ferent countries bear on their surface; that this 

 water has been ever since gradually diminishing, 

 and will continue to diminish until it shall be quite 

 absorbed; that our globe, being then set on fire, 

 will become a sun, and have various planets re- 

 volving in its' vortex, till its igneous particles being 

 consumed, it will be extinguished; that then it 

 will roll through the immensity of space^ without 



