THEORY OP THE EARTH. 37 



6. Proofs that the Revolutions have been sudden. 



These repeated irruptions and retreats of the 

 sea have neither been slow nor gradual ; most ot 

 the catastrophes which have occasioned them have 

 been sudden ; and this is easily proved, especially 

 with regard to the last of them, the traces of which 

 are most conspicuous. In the northern regions it 

 has left the carcasses of some large quadrupeds 

 which the ice had arrested, and which are pre- 

 served even to the present day with their skin, 

 their hair, and their flesh. If they had not been 

 frozen as soon as killed they must quickly have 

 been decomposed by putrefaction. But this eter- 

 nal frost could not have taken possession of the re- 

 gions which these animals inhabited except by the 

 same cause which destroyed them;* this cause, 

 therefore, must have been as sudden as its effect. 

 The breaking to pieces and overturnings of the 

 strata, which happened in former catastrophes, 

 *how plainly enough that they were sudden and 

 v iolent like the last ; and the heaps of debris and 

 rounded pebbles which are found in various places 



* The two most remarkable phenomena of this kind, and which 

 must for ever banish all idea of a slow and gradual revolution, are the 

 rhinoceros, discovered in 1771 in the banks of the Filhoui, and the ele- 

 phant recently found by M. Adams near the mouth of the Lena. This 

 last retained its flesh and skin, on Avhich was hair of two kinds ; one 

 short, fine, and crisped, resembling wool, and the other like long brig- 

 ties. The flesh was still in such high preservation, that it was eaten 

 by dogs. 



