Calcutta Delta. 547 



by different individuals, the first would be inclined to assign long lapses 

 of time for the formation of the Delta ; while the other would, from his 

 collected data, argue precisely the reverse. 



" Could we know the mean or extreme rate of production of stratified 

 deposits at the present day, this would enable us to conjecture the 

 lengths of some geological periods, and with double hazard refer others 

 to this conjectural scale; but even this unsatisfactory estimate would 

 be liable to the further and fatal error of not knowing the ratio of 

 the forces in the different periods. To assume this ratio, is only to aug- 

 ment in a still higher degree the amount of improbability."* 



It is only, therefore, from facts stored up through a considerable num- 

 ber of years, that we can ever hope to obtain anything like an approxi- 

 mation to the truth ; yet this very country in which the opportunities 

 for studying nature in her grandest scale are most abundant, is un- 

 fortunately likewise that, in which the least encouragement has been 

 given to such researches. 



One thing however is certain, which is, that as the Deluge is admitted 

 to have been the last of the general changes on the Earth, it must fol- 

 low as a matter of necessity, that all the alluvial lands of the Continent of 

 India, and I may add likewise of every quarter of the globe, have been depo- 

 sited since that epoch ; or in other words, within the so called historical 

 era of man, comprising a period of little more than 4000 years, since the di- 

 luvial strata emerged from beneath the waves. 



" I am aware," says Cuvier, " that some naturalists lay great stress 

 upon the thousands of ages which they call into existence by a dash 

 of the pen ;" but the researches of that eminent man all tended to 

 shew, that the present order of things could not aspire to greater anti- 

 quity than the Scripture assigns to them. 



" It must in fact," he says, " have been since this last retreat of the 

 waters that our present steep declivities have begun to disintegrate, 

 and to form heaps of debris at their bases ; that our present rivers have 

 begun to flow, and to deposit their alluvial matters ; that our present 

 vegetation has begun to extend itself, and to produce soil; that our 

 present cliffs have begun to be corroded by the sea ; that our present 

 downs have begun to be blown up by the wind ; just as it must have 

 been since this same epoch, that colonies of men have begun, for the 

 first or second time, to spread themselves and to form establishments in 

 places fitted by nature for their reception."! 



* Phillip's Treatise on Geology, Encyc. Brit page 294. 

 t Jameson's Cuvier's Theory of the Earth. 



