410 SEVERAL HYPOTHESES TO AID IN 



The approach or the stroke of a comet has been sup- 

 posed, by Count Buffon, capable of overturning the 

 order of things, and of introducing into the system full 

 as much confusion as the strata, and their organic re 

 mains exhibit to us. 



Whether this was the fact or not, is impossible for its 

 to know. Mr. Kir wan has given weighty reasons for his 

 belief, that the globe's surface has been, at some remote 

 period, most violently assailed by a mighty flood from 

 the southeast. Tearing up and bearing away the looser 

 materials of the southern hemisphere, it has brought a 

 great body of them to the northern, and impressed upon 

 the Capes of Good-Hope, of Horn, of Van Diemen's 

 Land, and other promontories, the marks of its over- 

 whelming force. 



This opinion corresponds very well with the geolo- 

 gical features of the United States. What agent so ca- 

 pable or so likely to wash up the sand and other materials 

 into such ridges as our mountains present? The impulse 

 of an ocean upturned from its bed, rolling impetuously 

 over the land, and carrying every thing before it, may 

 be supposed competent to the accomplishment of such a 

 work. 

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Attempts have been made to explain this rush of wa- 

 ters, and concomitant events, by supposing that our 

 planet has changed its axis. This hypothesis has some- 

 thing plausible to the geologist, and seems to help him 

 out of many difficulties. It places the poles and the 

 equator of ancient days in situations very different from 

 those they occupy at present. Regions then cold are 

 now warm, and districts heretofore bound by frost, are 

 at this day cheered or parched by heat. 



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