WA""! THE FLOOD THEORY. 391 



had to make way for it, but when philosophically viewed it will be seen 

 that it was really a decided advance upon those. This is clear when 

 we remember that it Involves the admission that the petrified forms 

 represent true living forms that once inhabited the earth, which in so 

 far is a scientific truth not embodied in any of the hypotheses thus far 

 considered. He who reads the discussion of those times cannot fail to 

 observe that it bears the stamp of all progressive controversy, in which 

 a more realistic conception is confronting and overthrowing older ideal- 

 istic ones. 



The first intimation that remains of the Flood might be looked for 

 seems to have come from Martin Luther, who in his commentary on the 

 book of G-enesis said he had no doubt that surviving indications of the 

 Deluge might be found in the form of wood hardened into stone around 

 the mines and smelting mills.''' Alexander ab Alexandre in his "Gen- 

 iales dies" (1522), also held this view, and was followed by Agricola 

 (1546), Matthiolus (1564), Gesner (1565), and Imperatus''* (1599). But 

 this explanation made little or no headway against the fanciful theories 

 of the time, and it was not until nearly a century later that the flood- 

 theory, revived perhaps by a new edition of the work of Alexander ab 

 Alexandro,'^ began to be reasserted and to take firm root. Dr. John 

 Woodward, of London, who was a great collector of fossils, published a 

 work in 1695 '* in which he held that all the solid parts of the earth's 

 crust were loosened by the Flood and mingled promiscuously in its 

 waters, and that at its close everything sank back to the surface ac- 

 cording to its specific gravity, the remains of animals and plants as- 

 suming the positions in the respective strata in which they are now found 

 petrified. Lhwyd, also, in the work already cited (1699) and other writ- 

 ings, gave countenance to this theory, which had thus acquired con- 

 siderable respectability prior to the opening of the eighteenth century. 

 But the greatest champion and expounder of th^ diluvian hypothesis 

 was still to come in the person of Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, a brief 

 sketch of whose life and work has already been given. His great work" 

 appeared in 1709, in which he severely attacks all other theories and 

 brings forward a mass of evidence in favor of his own which has proved 

 of the greatest value to the progress of substantial knowledge and 

 especially to that of paleobotany. It is not by this really useful and 

 for its time important and remarkable work that, we fear, the name of 



""Und ich zweifele nicht, dass noch von der Siindfluth her ist, dass man an Oer- 

 tern, da Bergwerck isf, oft Holtz findet, das schier zu Steinen gehartet ist." Martin 

 Luther's Grundliohe und Erbauliche Auslegung des Ersteu Biichs Mosia, Halle, 1739, 

 Band I, col. 176. 



'■» Ferrante Imperato. Dell' historia naturale. Napoli, 1590. 



'5 Alexander ab Alexandre. GenialiumDierum, librivi. Parisiis, 1539, Lib.v, Caput 

 ix, fol. 120. 



™ John Woodward. An essay towards a natural history of the earth and terrestrial 

 bodies. London, 1695. (See pp. 74 et seq.) 



"Johann Jacob Scheuchzer. Herbarium diluvianum. Tiguri, 1709. 



