24 



the account of Moses, the work of creation was ac- 

 complished, and the order in which the fossil re- 

 mains of plants and animals are deposited in the 

 earth, has surprised, and has been acknowledged by 

 learned sceptics themselves.* 



It will be useless to push these arguments further. 

 The catastrophes which have produced the seconda- 

 ry strata, and the diluvian depositions, could not 

 have been local or partial phenomena; but rather 

 than call upon a comet, with the abstracted philoso- 

 pher, to deluge the earth for every new geological 

 epoch -or to change the axis of motion of our planet 

 or to resort to any of his wild, fanciful, and impious 

 theories, we should, with Sir Humphrey Davy, even 

 prefer the dream that all the secondary strata were 

 created^ filled with the remains, as it were, of animal 

 life, to confound the speculations of our geological 

 reasoners. 



* The Baron Cuvier, on this subject, remarks, respecting the 

 Jewish legislator "His books show us, that he had very perfect 

 ideas respecting several of the highest questions of natural philo- 

 sophy. His cosmogony, especially, considered purely in a scien- 

 tific point of view, is extremely remarkable, inasmuch as the 

 order which it assigns to the different epochs of creation, is pre- 

 cisely the same as that which has been deduced from geological 

 considerations." 



