15U THEORY OP THE EARTH. 



scribed it with all the circumstances which had 

 been handed down to them by tradition respect- 

 ing the great deluge ; and they represented Deu- 

 calion as having repeopled the earth, yet allowed 

 a lengthened posterity to his uncle Atlas. 



The incoherence of all these traditionary tales, 

 while they attest the barbarism and ignorance of 

 all the tribes around the Mediterranean, attest 

 also the recentness of their establishments; and 

 this very circumstance is in itself a strong proof 

 of the existence of a great catastrophe. The 

 Egyptians, it is true, spoke of hundreds of cen- 

 turies, but these were filled by a succession of 

 gods and demi-gods ; and it is in a great degree 

 ascertained in modern times, that the long series 

 of years and of successive human kings which they 

 placed after the demi-gods, and before the usur- 

 pation of the shepherds, belonged only to the suc- 

 cessions of contemporaneous chiefs of several small 

 states, instead of a single series of successive kings 

 f all Egypt. 



Macrobius* assures us that collections of ob- 

 servations of eclipses made in Egypt were preserv- 

 ed, which presupposed uninterrupted labour for 

 at least twelve hundred years before the reign of 

 Alexander. How comes it then, had this been 

 the case, that Ptolemy should not have availed 



*Jhij5oxnnio Scipionis, 21, 



