253 



trees and plants. Assuming these for the generalities of the earth's 

 external form, it is evident that the waters, whether supplied by 

 the rain alone, or by other sources, as seems to be implied by the 

 breaking up of the fountains of the great deep, must necessarily 

 have first filled the lower parts of the earth. When it attained a 

 greater height, then must this powerful element have rushed in 

 torrents from valley to valley, breaking down, or surmounting, 

 every intervening obstacle ; and laying prostrate the vast forests 

 with which the surface was every where clothed. Of the trees thus 

 overthrown, the lowest stratum of vegetable matter would be 

 formed, which would soon become buried beneath the sediment, 

 which would be continually depositing from the superincumbent 

 waters, loaded with every species of earthy, and even mineral mat- 

 ters, with which they would be impregnated by the effects of an 

 alluviation more powerful than we can possibly conceive. 



As the volume of the water increased, the sides of the mountains 

 would become subjected to the violence of its action. The roots of 

 the trees, which grew on their sides, would become loosened, and 

 the trees themselves, and the earth in which they had grown, with 

 the various other vegetables which had been generated and nou- 

 rished in the same matrix, would fall into the flood, and become 

 collected in particular spots. Thus would masses of vegetable 

 matter, immense beyond conception, become subjected to the domi- 

 nation of this powerful element. These several masses of vegetable 

 matter would become covered by strata of earth formed by the gra- 

 dual deposition of ponderous, but minutely divided particles, which 

 would soon form a covering so compact, as would be able consi- 

 derably to resist the ordinary fluctuation of the water. Similar 

 alternating strata, constituted^ by the accumulating masses of vege- 

 table matter, and the subsidence of particles of earth, may be sup- 

 posed to be thus continually forming until the waters had covered 

 the tops of the high hills. 



