418 ON THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE. 



luge ; and concludes from them, that the surface of the 

 globe, five or six thousand years ago, underwent a gene- 

 ral and sudden revolution, by which the lands inhabited 

 by the human beings who lived at that time, and by the 

 various species of animals known at the present day, 

 were overflowed by the ocean ; out of which emerged the 

 present habitable portions of the globe. This celebiated 

 naturalist maintains, that these regions of the earth were 

 peopled by the few individuals who were preserved, 

 and that the tradition of the catastrophe has been pre- 

 served among these new races of people, variously mo- 

 dified by the difference of their situation and their social 

 disposition. According to Mr Cuvier, similar revolu- 

 tions of nature had taken place, at periods long antece- 

 dent to that of the Mosaic deluge. The dry land was in- 

 habited, if not by human beings, at least by land animals 

 at an earlier period ; and must have been changed from 

 the dry land to the bed of the ocean ; and it might even 

 be concluded from the various species of animals con- 

 tained in it, that this change, as well as its opposite, had 

 occurred more than once. 



This opinion being brought forward in a geognostic 

 work, especially in a work abounding in such valuable 

 matters of fact, and stated as the result of geognostic in- 

 vestigation, we may be permitted, in this point of view, to 

 examine it ; and to ask, whether, from the phenomena 

 exhibited by the present condition of the earth's surface, 

 we are entitled to conclude that it owes its conformation 

 to such a universal deluge. *?** 



We know, from arguments suggested by chemistry 

 and the higher mechanics, that the globe was once in a 

 state of fluidity ; hence it might be maintained with some 



