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dependent portions of mountains, with their newly-produced forests, 

 would frequently be sinking in the surrounding waters. Thus would 

 additional layers of vegetable, and of earthy matters, be repeatedly 

 formed over those strata of vegetables which had been overthrown 

 by the first violence of the deluge. 



As when the greater part of the waters of the deluge had drained 

 off, and when the surface of the globe again became divided into 

 water and dry land, the lower and more excavated parts would 

 necessarily retain the water for a long time ; thus, as well as the 

 rivers and seas, would immense lakes be formed. In these lakes 

 would the numerous tribe of aquatic plants flourish, which, as the 

 waters at last subsided, would cover the bottoms of these hollows 

 with a mass of vegetable matter, which becoming gradually covered 

 by a coat of earth, would be secured from the action of the air. 

 From the numerous revolutions which the newly-formed earth would 

 be destined for a time to undergo, many of these hollows might be 

 again filled with water. Adjoining lakes might burst through their 

 interposed mounds, and thus refill them ; or among the mountains 

 which helped to form the basons of these lakes, some of which had 

 been weakened in their bases, by the previous action of the waters, 

 might now become more effectually undermined, and might fall 

 into the lake beneath, and thus force the water beyond its newly- 

 established limits. In new lakes thus formed in the cavities of 

 previously existing ones, aquatic vegetation would again go on, 

 whilst a compact stratum from the subsidence of the suspended 

 earth would form at the bottom ; and when the waters themselves 

 had drained away, a fresh accumulation of vegetable matter would 

 be formed, which would, like the former, become covered with a 

 stratum of mud, capable of acquiring, as in the former instance, a 

 considerable degree of hardness. 



Such of the vegetable matters, as might float on the last re- 

 maining waters of the deluge, might be washed into other hollows 



