250 



this account was only meant to designate the regular progress of 

 the first race of men from a rude to a civilized state, will not affect 

 the present object of inquiry. A period sufficiently long to allow 

 a prodigious increase of the vegetation which adorned the surface 

 of the earth, must have elapsed, whilst the first families of man- 

 kind were thus emerging from a state of rudeness to that of civili- 

 zation. For during that period in which a people exist only in a 

 state of nature, as it is termed, the wants which they feel, and 

 consequently the arts which they cultivate, being few, necessity 

 will but seldom oblige them to level the trees of their surrounding 

 forests. Thus uninterrupted, the earth, which has been assumed to 

 have been well clothed, even immediately after its formation, must, 

 in the succeeding early ages, have teemed, in almost every part of 

 its surface, with vegetable life. 



From the same records we learn, that, after the earth had existed 

 during the period of sixteen hundred years, the Almighty decreed 

 that a flood of waters should be brought upon the earth, and that 

 the earth should be thus destroyed. All the fountains of the great 

 deep, we learn, were broken up, and the windows of heaven were 

 opened. Forty days and forty nights it rained . upon the earth, all 

 the high lulls that were under the whole heaven were covered, and 

 the waters prevailed upon the earth* an hundred and fifty days *. 



Various objections have been offered against this, the Mosaic, 

 account of the deluge. Men of the greatest learning and piety 

 have doubted, whether the relation should be taken literally or 

 not; and have differed very much, in their opinions, as to the ex- 

 tent to which this astonishing revolution of the earth reached. 

 Some have doubted the existence of a sufficient quantity of water, 

 to deluge the highest mountains of the earth ; whilst others, among 

 whom may be mentioned the Right Rev. Bishop of Clogher, have 



* Gen. vii. 



