26 CREATION OF ANIMALS. 



nights over the whole globe, would fall infinitely 

 short of the amount of water required to cover it 

 to this height. The mean quantity of rain that 

 now falls upon the earth in the course of a whole 

 year is short of three feet; there must therefore 

 have been an outbreak of waters from a source 

 which could supply all that was necessary to ac- 

 complish the will of the Almighty, and make the 

 earth itself a ruin, as well as sweep off its inhabi- 

 tants ; and where shall we look for this but to the 

 abyss that coucheth beneath the earth, whose foun- 

 tains, as the sacred historian tells us, were broken 

 up. If w 7 e consider the diameter of our globe, 

 and that the ocean in depth is not supposed to 

 exceed the highest mountains, we may conceive 

 that in a spheroid, whose diameter is 8000 miles, 

 allowing for the depth of the crust of the earth, 

 there is space for a treasure-house of water, of 

 sufficient amplitude to supply what the heavens 

 could not furnish, to raise the diluvial waters to 

 the height decreed in the Divine counsels. It 

 seems now agreed amongst geologists and mine- 

 ralogists that traces of the action of fire, as well 

 as water, are very visible amongst the present 

 strata of this globe : when the waters of the 

 abyss were sent out from their hidden receptacle, 

 it must be by the agency of some potent cause 

 employed by the Deity, equal to the production 

 of the effect he intended. 



In the present state of the globe, volcanos, or 



