426 ON THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE. 



materials of the precipitations. In the first and more 

 generally admitted case, the water was so different 

 from the present water, whether salt or fresh, that we 

 cannot infer from the inhabitants of the latter any thing 

 concerning the inhabitants of the former ; but we can 

 confidently maintain, that a greater resemblance pre- 

 vails between our sea and land water, than between either 

 the one or the other, and that fluid which was inhabited 

 by the shell-fish. In other respects, there remains no 

 other difference between fresh and salt water formations, 

 but that the bottom upon which the former is placed 

 once contained land water ; a fact worthy of observation : 

 but the notion of enclosed basins, and of isolated forma- 

 tions originating in them, the way in which fresh water 

 formations are supposed to have taken place, remained a 

 long time unsatisfactory. Finally, we may be permit- 

 ted to ask, upon what grounds they considered themselves 

 entitled to ascribe to the former sea the continual posses- 

 sion of a portion of salt, while the salt precipitates appear 

 only at particular intervals, and after long interruptions ? 

 If the sea occasionally contained a great, and sometimes 

 a very small, quantity of salt, it might equally be at times 

 altogether without it. And yet it deserves to be remem- 

 bered, that the beds of rock, to which the salt formations 

 are most nearly related, contain no petrifactions ; that, 

 therefore, the so-called marine animals are wanting in 

 those periods during which we have any direct evidence 

 of the presence of salt water. 



There is, however, a geognostic fact, which, in prefe- 

 rence to all others, has been cited in evidence of violent re- 

 volutions and deluges, that is, the appearance of conglome- 

 rates or of reproduced kinds of stone. Indeed, there might 



