460 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



ing of the waves, and has listened to the hollow hum of the stones 

 and pebbles rubbing against each other, with ceaseless friction, can 

 doubt, that rounded, water-worn pebbles are now every moment form^ 

 ing ; and were they found no where else, except on the shores, and in 

 moving waters, there would generally be no difficulty in assigning their 

 origin to this cause. But rounded stones, water-worn pebbles, and 

 bowlders, are found in every country, on the surface and in the soil, 

 and in regions the most remote from the ocean. This of course proves 

 the universal prevalence, sooner or later, at once or successively, of 

 diluvial waters. 



Why not attribute the rounding, as well as the position of the inland 

 water-worn stones to the diluvial ocean ? The answer which must be 

 returned, is, that the time allotted by the delnge described in Genesis 

 is too short for the process of grinding down hard stones, which would 

 occupy a very long period. A general deluge could transport immense 

 masses of these ruins, and deposit them where, to a great extent, we 

 now find them ; but it was not possible that it could, in so limited a 

 period, have effected much, in grinding down the angular fragments 

 of quartz* and of other hard stones, into ovoidal and globular pebbles, 

 and bowlders. That effect appears to have been, principally, the work 

 of the earlier oceans. 



The form of the loose materials, that cover the rocks, more or 

 less, in every country, is attributable chiefly to the wearing effects 

 of agents, operating, in all time, to produce disintegration and de- 

 composition ; their present position may be fairly attributed to dilu- 

 vial agency. 



An ingenious author, Mr. Penn, convinced that the deluge could not 

 account for the geological successions, has supposed them to be form- 

 ed in the ocean, between the creation of man and the deluge, at ivhich 

 time the then existing continents were, as he thinks, sunk, and the bed 

 of the ocean raised, to form our present continents, bringing up, of 

 course, all the marine deposits of sixteen centuries. 



It is not necessary to discuss this theory. It is disproved by the 

 discovery in caverns, and in the loose wreck, on the surface of the 

 ground, of immense deposits of the bones of terrestrial animals, which 

 have not existed in those countries within the limits of human knowl- 

 edge, and many of vrhich could not live in the present climates of 

 those countries; for instance, the tropical animals, elephants, tigers, 



* Topaz pebbles are found on the shores of New Holland: we have one which 

 is perfectly ovoidal. 



