Diluvium. 



165 



northwest, as I have abundantly shown ; and, therefore, it could not 

 have resulted from the elevation of the strata. 



In the eastern part of the State, however, it will be observed that 

 the strata of the gray wacke formation run generally east and west. 

 But they dip northerly ; and hence the current of water, which their 

 elevation produced, must have been towards the north : though if we 

 suppose it to have been southerly, this formation is too limited in ex- 

 tent to account for diluvial action over the whole State. 



But there is another circumstance, showing that the last deluge, 

 that swept over this State, was long subsequent to the elevation of the 

 strata. If we admit, what I think is true, that the tertiary formation 

 exhibited on the map along Connecticut river, was deposited before 

 the last deluge, it will follow that the elevation of the strata could not 

 have been the cause of that deluge. For the strata of this tertiary 

 formation are horizontal ; and, therefore, must have been deposited 

 after the elevation of the strata of the solid rocks beneath. Other- 

 wise the strata of the tertiary formation would also have been raised 

 and dislocated. Hence there must have been at least an interval long 

 enough, between the elevation of the strata and the last deluge, for 

 the deposition of this tertiary formation. And if we take the state- 

 ment of Dr. Macculloch,* in respect to the filling up of the lakes of 

 Scotland, as a standard of comparison, this will be shown to have 

 been no ephemeral period. He states that these lakes " shoal " at 

 the rate of half a foot in a century : and I apprehend that the tertiary 

 formation under consideration cannot be less than 150 feet in depth. 

 Nor can we suppose that this is but a small part of the period that 

 actually intervened between these two events; which may be regarded 

 as almost the first and the last of the geological catastrophes that have 

 happened on our globe. This opinion might be sustained by an ap- 

 peal to facts and principles : but I conceive that this is not the proper 

 place for entering into such discussions. 



I may seem here, however, to be advancing opinions contradictory 

 to the Mosaic chronology of the globe. But they are simply opposed 

 to the prevailing interpretation of that record. If we only suppose, 

 what many of the ablest theologians and philologists maintain, and 

 what geological researches imperiously demand, that Moses, after 

 describing in the first verse of his history, the original creation of the 

 universe " in the beginning," passes over in silence a long interven- 



* Macculloch's System of Geology, London 1831 — Vol. I. p. 507. 



