59 



it, as those of E^fypt and Armenia, which, according to 

 a tradition of the Eg\ [)tini)s and Hebrews, were over- 

 flowed about 2300 years before the Christian sera; 

 those of Attica, said to have been overflowed in the 

 time of Ogyges, about five hundred years later; and 

 those of Thessaly, in the tifne of Deucalion, still 300 

 years posterior. But such deluges as these will not ac- 

 count for the shells found in the higher lands. A sec- 

 ond opinion has been entertained, which is, that, in 

 times anterior to the records either of history or tradi- 

 tion, the bed of the ocean, the principal residence of 

 the shelled tribe, has, by some great convulsion of na- 

 ture, been heaved to the heights at which we now find 

 shells and other remains of marine animals. The fa- 

 vourers of this o{)inion do well to suppose the great 

 events on which it rests to have taken place beyond all 

 the seras of history ; for within these, certainly none 

 such are to be found ; and we may venture to say fur- 

 ther, that no fact has taken place, either in our own 

 days, or in the thousands of years recorded in history, 

 which proves the existence of any natural agents, with- 

 in or without the bowels of the earth, of force sufficient 

 to heave, to the height of 15,000 feet, such masses as 

 the Andes. The difference between the yjower neces- 

 sary to ])roduce such an eflfect, and that which shuffled 

 together the different parts of Calabria in our days, is 

 so immense, that from the existence of the latter we 

 are not authorised to infer that of the former. 



iVI. de Voltaire has suggested a third solution of this 

 difficulty (Quest. Encycl. Coquilles). He cites an in- 

 stance in Touraine, where in the sj)ace of 80 years, a 

 particular spot of earth had been twice metamorphosed 

 into soft stone, which had becoirie hard when employed 

 in building. In this stone shells of various kinds were 

 produced, discoverable at first only with the micros- 

 cope, but afterwards growing with the stone. From 

 this fact, I suppose, he would have us infer, that, be- 

 sides the usual process for generating shells by the ela- 

 boration of earth and water in animal vessels, nature 

 may have provided an equivalent operation, by passing 



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