THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



position, is, what some moderns have thought, 

 That astronomy was among the number of the 

 sciences that were preserved by the small number 

 of men who escaped from that catastrophe. 



The antiquity of certain mining operations has 

 also been prodigiously exaggerated by some wri- 

 ters. A recent writer pretends that the mines of 

 the island of Elba, to judge from their wastes, must 

 have been explored above forty thousand years 

 ago ; while another author, who has also examined 

 these wastes with much attention, reduces the in- 

 terval to somewhat more than five thousand years, 

 supposing that the ancients wrought out every 

 year one-fourth only of the quantity that is wrought 

 out in the present day.* We have no reason, 

 however, to believe that the Romans, who consum- 

 ed so much iron in their armies, were so slow in 

 their mining operations as this high antiquity of 

 the mines of Elba would imply ; and besides, even 

 if these mines had been wrought for no more than 

 four thousand years, how should it have been that 

 iron was so little known among the ancients in 

 the first ages of Greece and Rome ? 



34. Concluding Reflections. 

 I am of opinion, then, with M. Deluc and M. 



* See History of China, before the Deluge of the Ogigians, by 3VL 

 de Fortin d'Urban, II. 33. 



