- s 



40 OX THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



in so many and so contrary suppositions, that the very name of their 

 science has been long a subject of raillery for some prejudiced persons, 

 who only look at the various systems that have been broached, and 

 forget or are ignorant of the long and important series of positive facts 

 that have been developed.* 



Ancient Systems of Geologists. 



For a long time only two events, only two changes of the globe, 

 have been admitted — the creation and the deluge ; and all the labours 

 of geologists have tended to explain the present state, by imagining a 

 certain primitive state afterwards modified by the deluge,^and to which 

 each speculist assigned his own causes, action, and effects. 



Thus, according to one,f the earth at first had an equal and light 

 crust which covered the abyss of waters, and which burst to produce 

 the deluge ; its relics formed the mountains. According to another,^; 

 the deluge was occasioned by a momentaneous suspension of the cohe- 

 sion in minerals ; the whole mass of the globe was dissolved, and the 

 paste of it was penetrated by shells. According to a third,§ God 

 lifted up the mountains to allow the waters, which produced the 

 deluge, to escape ; and removedthem to places where there were more 

 stones, because otherwise they could not have been supported. A 

 fourth || created the earth with the atmosphere of one comet, and deluged 

 it through the tail of another ; the heat which remained to it from its 

 first origin excited all mankind to sin ; thus they were all drowned 

 except the fishes, which had apparently passions less unruly. 



We see that, even in confining ourselves to the limits fixed by Ge- 

 nesis, naturalists have a wide field before them : they soon found 

 themselves in difficulties, and when they had succeeded in attributing 

 to the six days of creation indefinite periods, ages costing them nothing, 

 their systems took a flight proportioned to the intervals which they 

 could dispose of. 



The great Leibnitz amused himself, like Descartes, in making the 

 earth a quenched sun^f, a vitrified globe, on which vapours having 

 fallen at the time of its extinction, seas were formed, which in their 

 turn deposited calcareous formations. 



* When I say this, I announce a fact daily proved, but I have not pretended to 

 express my own opinion, as some geologists have thought. As some ambiguity in 

 my speech has given rise to the error, I must apologize for it. 



f Burnet Telluris Theoria Sacra. 1681. 



X Woodward's Essay towards the Natural History of the Earth. 1702. 



§ Scheuchzer, Mem. de l'Acad: 1708. 



|| Whiston. A New Theory of the Earth. Loud. 1708. 



% Leibnitz, Protogtea. Act. Leips. 1683. Gctt. 1749. 



