28 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE ORDEAL BY EIRE. 



IT required a century to gain the credence of the world 

 to the suggestion of Fracastoro. This point gained, it 

 took a century and a half to overthrow the popular belief 

 that the inhumation of fossil remains was all effected at 

 the time of the Mosaic deluge. But few observations of 

 the nature of those already cited had, at this period, been 

 made. With our present knowledge of the oscillations 

 which are going on in the comparative level of continents 

 and oceans, he would seem to be beyond the reach of argu- 

 ment who can still deny that our beautiful prairies have, 

 for ages instead of months, been the bed of a sea which 

 rolled its surges from the Adirondacks on the east to the 

 Sierra Nevada on the west. Admitting the deluge of Noah 

 to have been universal, were the agencies in operation dur- 

 ing the one hundred and fifty days of its continuance suf- 

 ficiently energetic to accumulate sediments twenty miles 

 in thickness in that brief period ? Such a conclusion is 

 contradicted by all our observations, instead of being sus- 

 tained by them. These stratified rocks cover nineteen 

 twentieths of the earth's surface; and the material for 

 them has been ground from the rocky shores of ancient 

 islands and continents by the beating of the waves. If 

 they have thus been distributed by the action of water, it 

 has been a slow process. Admitting, then, the Noachian 

 deluge to have been universal, and to have covered the 

 mountains — since they also are made of fossiliferous strata, 

 even to the altitude of eight thousand feet — is it likely 



