Natural llistory. 189 



sive step which has been lately taken in the im- 

 provement of this science has served to show^ their 

 fallacy. The investigations of the latest and most 

 accurate philosophers have afforded proof little 

 short of demonstration, that the earth, at least in 

 its present form, cannot have existed longer than 

 appears from the Alosaic account; the absolute 

 falshood of many positive assertions, and specious 

 inferences, hostile to the scripture chronology, has 

 been evinced; and thence has arisen a new pre- 

 sumptive argument in support of the authenticity 

 of that Volume, which contains the most ancient, 

 and the most precious of all records. 



METEOROLOGY. 



The natural history of the atmosphere began to 

 be cultivated, as a science, in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. The ancients, for want of the necessary in- 

 struments, were almost wholly unacquainted jvvith 

 it. But soon after the invention of the thermome- 

 ter and the barometer^ the learned men of Europe 

 began to avail themselves of the manifest advant- 

 ages which these instruments gave them, in stu- 

 dying the origin, nature, and effects of those 

 changes which take place in the atmosphere, espe- 

 cially with respect to heat and cold, motion and 

 rest, moisture and gravity: still, however, from 

 the small number of the meteorological observa- 

 tions made by accurate philosophers; from the 

 want of an extensive comparison of the results of 

 different observations; and especially from the 

 low state of those sciences most intimately con- 

 nected with meteorology, little progress had been 

 made in this department of knowledge prior to 

 the commencement of the century under review. 

 And though it must be acknowledged th^it this 

 subject is one of those which are still far from 



