VOL. XXXIII.] IHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 35 



or nearer the pole, than now they are; by which there are immense quantities 

 of ice yet unthawed in those parts, chilling the air to such a degree, that the 

 sun's warmth seems hardly to be felt there, and of which the Poet might justly 

 say, Frigus iners illic habitat pallorque tremorque — Ac jejuna fames. 



Some further Thoughts upon the same Subject, delivered on the igth of the 

 same Month. By the same. N° 383, p. 123. 



Having been advised since the last day, by a person whose judgment Dr. 

 H. had great reason to respect, that what he then advanced, ought rather to 

 be understood of those changes which might have happened to the earth in 

 times before the creation, and which might possibly have reduced a former 

 world to a Chaos, out of whose ruins the present might be formed, than of 

 the deluge whereby mankind was in a manner extinguished about 4000 years 

 since; that being much more gradually brought to pass, and with some cir- 

 cumstances that this hypothesis cannot admit of, which abler pens, perhaps, 

 may account for : what Dr. H. has advanced, he desires may be taken for no 

 more than the contemplation of the effects of such a shock as might possibly, 

 and not improbably, have befallen this lump of earth and water, in times of 

 which we have no manner of tradition, as being before the first production of 

 man, and therefore not knowable but by Revelation, or else a posteriori by in- 

 duction from a convenient number of experiments or observations, arguing 

 such an agitation once, or oftner, to have befallen the materials of this globe. 

 And perhaps, in due periods of time, such a catastrophe may not be unnecessary 

 for the well-being of the future world; to bury deep from the surface those 

 parts, which by length of time are indurated into stony substances, and become 

 unapt for vegetable production, by which all animals are either immediately or 

 mediately sustained : the ponderous matter in such a mixture subsiding first, 

 and the lighter and finer mould remaining for the latter settling, to invest the 

 exterior surface of the new world. This may, perhaps, be thought hard, to 

 destroy the whole race for the benefit of those that are to succeed. But if 

 we consider death simply, and how that the life of each individual is but of a 

 very small duration, it will be found that as to those that die, it is indifferent 

 whether they die in a pestilence out of 100,000 per ann. or ordinarily out of 

 25,000 in this great city, the pestilence only appearing terrible to those that 

 survive to contemplate the danger they have escaped. Besides, as Seneca 

 has it, 



Vitae est avidus quisquis non vult 

 Mundo secum pereunte mori. 

 F 2 



