52 NATURAL HISTORY of NORWAY. 



onal folution ftiall be hit upon. What I moft lament, is, that this 

 learned and ingenious writer has not fulfilled his promife fo often 

 repeated, of demonftrating both the poffibility and reality of his 

 feveral hypothefes, and confirming them by experiments. He had 

 for this end projected a large work, of which his Theory of the 

 Earth was to be only introductory. The chief objection, which 

 I could have wiflied to have feen anfwered by him, relates to the 

 hard fubrtance of ft ones, which he takes for granted to have been 

 alfo difTolved and liquified. 

 Conjeaureon I afk, by what means this liquefaction was wrought at the 



the diflolution . r i i i it r i "i r r 



of the earth, time or the deluge r it recourie be had to the fuppofed central 

 fire, from which the globe derives its levity, &c. and it be faid 

 that this by coction could diflblve the hardeft quarries of marble, 

 (the veins and ftreaks whereof fufUciently mew its former foftnels, 

 and the loco- motion of its parts, not to mention the heterogeneous 

 things found in it) then Noah and the animals in the ark muft 

 have fuffered, unlefs we take the liberty of forming a new hypo- 

 thefis, that this coction was not univerfal at once, but affected 

 only a certain part of the globe, and certain tracts of its furface * : 

 Strange and novel as it may appear, to aillgn fuch a vehement 

 heat to the water of the deluge, yet this was a very ancient tra- 

 dition, if we pay any regard to the words attributed to the devout 

 Pionius, who fuffered martyrdom in the year 250, under the 

 emperor Decius, and among other things fpoke thus to his unbe- 

 lieving perfecutors, " Ye yourfelves, from your old traditions, ac- 

 knowledge that the deluge of Noah, whom you call Deucalion, 

 was mingled with fire, yet do you but half underftand the real 

 truth of this matter." Now though no great ftrefs be to be laid 

 thereon, yet is this conjecture far from being fo improbable as that 

 of Burnet, who makes the chaos of our globe to have been the re- 

 mains or afhes of a conformed and vitrified comet, which by the 

 creation, acquired a new life, form, and difpofition f. 



But 



* Who knows whether any volcanoes exifted before the deluge, efpecially, whe- 

 ther it did not previoufly accumulate vegetable and animal fragments from the refi- 

 nous (lime of the bottom of the fea, or at leaft great quantities of fuel, to the ful- 

 phureous and otherwife inexhauftible ore already depofited there ? Who at leafc will 

 difpute the probability that the fea, furnimes fuel to thefe dreadful and inceffant fub- 

 terraneous fires, all volcanoes being near the fea. D. Joh. Friederich Henkel's Pyri- 

 tologia, Cap. v. p. 308. feq. 



f The celebrated naturalift Mr. Buffon, in feveral parts of Tom. 1; of his Natural 

 Hiftory, in fome meafure clofes with this hypothefis, tho' he differs very much from 



him 



