VOL. XVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 49S 



the female the chief agent in generation ; each egg containing an animalcule, 

 the arguments for and against this hypothesis make up the remainder of this 

 discourse ; though he confesses himself not fully satisfied as to all doubts that 

 may be raised, but ends with his reasons for dissenting from Leuwenhoeck, that 

 all animals proceed from an animalcule in the male sperm. 



The author takes the same method in the second discourse on the general 

 deluge, bringing first the testimonies of the ancient heathen writers concerning 

 it, endeavouring to show, that by Deucalion's they understood Noah's flood, 

 which they also make universal, though he owns there was in Thessaly such a 

 particular flood as they call Deucalion's, about 700 years after Noah's, and that 

 of Ogyges in Attica, about 230 years before Deucalion's. Proceeding to treat 

 of the causes of this general flood, rejecting that of the air's being turned into 

 water, alleged by Kircher in Area Noae, he pitches upon those two mentioned 

 in Genesis, the breaking up the fountains of the great deep, and opening the 

 windows of heaven, by the last of which he supposes a great quantity of water 

 may be afforded, taking the waters above the firmament to be waters lodged 

 above the inferior regions of the air. By the fountains of the deep he under- 

 stands the subterraneous waters. As to the expence of the sea-water by 

 vapour, he concludes the receipts of the Mediterranean to fall short of its 

 expence. He questions whether there be any under-ciirrents in the sea, and 

 proceeding to his present subject of the breaking up the fountains, he by the 

 way dissents from Dr. Plot, in his Nat. Hist, of Staffordshire, That the valleys 

 are as much below the surface of the sea as the mountains are above it, since 

 the rivers run down from those valleys into the sea ; and seems dissatisfied with 

 the opinion of an inferior circulation of water, as not sufficiently demonstrated 

 how it can be performed. Having observed that the hills and dry land are so 

 equally dispersed over the world, as to counterbalance each other, so that the 

 centres of motion, gravity, and magnitude, concur in one, he discourses occa- 

 sionally of the original of springs, all which he holds to be partly from vapours 

 condensed into dews, and partly from rain and snow ; giving his thoughts on 

 Mr. Halley's late hypothesis ; coming at last to what he thinks the most pro- 

 bable causes of the flood, viz. the changing the centre of the earth at that time, 

 and setting it nearer the middle of our continent, whence the Atlantic and 

 Pacific oceans pressing on the subterraneous abyss, by that means forced the 

 water upwards and compelled it to run out at the wide mouths made at the 

 breaking up of the fountains of the deep. These waters thus poured out upon 

 the earth, the declivity being changed by the removal of the centre, could not 

 flow to the sea again, but stagnate on the earth ; and after the earth returning 

 to its old centre, these waters returned also to their former receptacles. He 



