10 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 



dated much furtlier back than five or six thousand years/' A period 

 this, strikingly corresponding with the date probably to be assigned to 

 the third day of the Mosaic creation, which, on the presumption that the 

 following days after the first appearance of the sun, were actually days of 

 the present length, will be about 5820 years. This coincidence is the 

 more valuable, as it is plain that it does not arise from any intention in 

 M. Cuvier, to accommodate himself to the account of Moses. 



Indeed it is remarkable, that the only revolution for wliich Cuvier has 

 recourse to the authority of the word of God, is that of the deluge, and 

 the date of this event will bring him considerably short of the latest 

 period, which he has liimself fixed for the last great catastrophe, I cannot 

 leave the present point without observing, that Cuvier states it as his 

 own opinion, that even the primitive strata were more or less affected by 

 the last revolution of which we have been speaking. In the fourth and 

 seventh chapters, he has these striking remarks : — having before spoken 

 of the previous revolutions, by which those primitive masses which 

 now form the peaks of the highest mountains, were originally " hfted 

 up," at the end of the seventh chapter he observes, that "these 

 primitive masses have also suffered other revolutions posterior to the 

 formation of the secondary strata, and have perhaps given rise to, or at 

 least have partaken of some portion of the revolutions and changes, which 

 these latter strata have experienced." There are actually considerable 

 portions of the primitive strata uncovered, although placed in lower 

 situations than many of the secondary strata, and we cannot conceive 

 how it should have so happened, unless the primitive strata in these 

 places had forced themselves into view after the foi'mation of those which 

 are secondary. Cuvier mentions other remarkable circumstances tending 

 to estabhsh the same point. 



I find from Dr. Kidd's excellent work on Geology, that he agrees with 

 Saussure and De Luc, in supposing that operations of a nature very similar 

 to those above inferred from the Mosaic account, must have taken place 

 shortly previous to the appearance of the present order of creation on 

 the earth's surface. Saussure was of opinion that there had been a great 



