on and near the Erie Canal. 249 



toad must have been full grown at the time. Toads are oft- 

 en found in compact, hard, gravelly diluvial deposits, in situ- 

 ations which demonstrate that they must have lived from the 

 time of the deluge. I think I am warranted in saying this 

 without citing authorities, as it is a common occurrence. 

 Then why may they not have lived a few centuries longer, 

 if we admit them a life of at least three thousand years? 



14. Living Molluscous Animals. 



The diluvial deposits in the great diluvial trough through 

 which the Erie canal is made, contain ridges of hard com- 

 pact gravel. A remarkable ridge of this kind lies in an 

 oblique direction across the canal, running southwesterly 

 from the village of Rome, sixteen miles west of Utica. While 

 cutting through this ridge, the workmen found several hun- 

 dred of live molluscous animals. They were chiefly of the 

 Mya cariusa and Mi/a purpurea — (Unio of Bruguieres and 

 Barnes.) I have before me several of the shells from which 

 the workmen took the animals, fried and ate them. Mr. 

 Brainard, who now resides at the place and keeps a public 

 house on the bank of the canal, was present at the time, and 

 w^ill give the curious a satisfactory account of it. I have re- 

 ceived several of the shells, with satisfactory assurances that 

 the animals were taken alive from the depth of forty-two feet 

 in the same deposit and near the same place. 



I need not be prolix in the enumeration of facts of this 

 kind ; as similar cases are frequently recorded. My object 

 is to present a case where the deposit is decidedly diluvial ; 

 consequently these animals must have lain from the time of 

 the deluge. For the earth in which they are found is too 

 compact for them to be produced by a succession of gene- 

 rations. Therefore the lives of these animals are greatly 

 prolonged by exclusion from air and light, or their natural 

 age is more than three thousand years. At any rate, they 

 prove the absurdity of Darwin's hypothesis — that all animals 

 are perfected at every successive generation, and that man 

 " probably began his career as a fish.'" For these fresh wa- 

 ter clams of three thousand years old, precisely resemble the 

 same species which now inhabit the fresh waters of that dis- 

 trict. 



Vol. XV.— No. 2. 



