34 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO J724. 



But the Almighty generally making use of natural means to bring about his 

 will, Dr. H. thought it not amiss to give the society an account of some 

 thoughts that occurred to him on this subject; wherein, says he, if I err, I 

 shall find myself in very good company. 



In N° 190 of these Transactions, he proposed the casual shock, of a comet, 

 or other transient body, as an expedient to change instantly the poles and 

 diurnal rotation of the globe; at that time only aiming to show how the axis 

 of the e:irth being changed, would occasion the sea to recede from those parts 

 towards which the poles did approach, and to increase upon and overflow those 

 parts from which the poles were departed; but at that time he did not consider 

 the great agitation such a shock must necessarily occasion in the sea, sufiicient 

 to answer for all those strange appearances of heaping vast quantities of earth 

 and high cliffs upon beds of shells, which once were the bottom of the sea; 

 and raising up mountains where none were before, mixing the elements into 

 such a heap as the Poets describe the old Chaos; for such a shock impelling the 

 solid parts, would occasion the waters, and all fluid substances that were un- 

 confined, as the sea is, with one impetus to run violently towards that part of 

 the globe where the blow was received ; and that with force sufficient to rake 

 with it the whole bottom of the ocean, and to carry it upon the land; heaping 

 up into mountains those earthy parts it had borne away with it, in those places 

 where the opposite waves balance each other, miscens ima summis, which may 

 account for those long continued ridges of mountains. And again, the recoil 

 of this heap of waters would return towards the opposite parts of the earth, 

 with a less impetus than the first, and so reciprocating many times, would at 

 last come to settle in such a manner as we now observe in the structure of the 

 superficial parts of the globe. 



In this case it will be much more difficult to show how Noah and the animals 

 should be preserved, than that all things in which was the breath of life should 

 hereby be destroyed. Such a shock would also occasion a differing length of 

 the day and year, and change the axis of the globe, according to the obliquity 

 of the incidence of the stroke, and its direction, in regard to the former axis. 

 That some such thing has happened, may be guessed, as the earth seems as if 

 it were new made out of the ruins of an old world, wherein appear such animal 

 bodies as were before the deluge, but by their own nature and defences from 

 the weather, have endured ever since, either petrified, or else entire in statu 

 naturali. Such a shock may have occasioned that vast depression of the 

 Caspian Sea, and other great lakes in the world; and it is not unlikely but that 

 extreme cold felt in the north-west of America, about Hudson's Bay, may be 

 occasioned by those parts of the world having once been much more northerly. 



