414 THE GEOLOGIST. 



of a very long-continued rain-fall. If this be so, and it were due to 

 the cause that we have been considering, it would bring the period 

 within the era of man, and the tradition of a flood may have a deep- 

 seated origin of truth in remotest antiquity. Hence the only reason 

 why we have connected the subject of the Deluge with the almost 

 purely hypothetical speculation we have been guilty of. In the later 

 tertiary deposits there seems almost everywhere evidence of the 

 torrential action of water, and apparently tumultuous accumulation. 

 The rain-fall of lunar vapours might have produced such numerous 

 simultaneous local floods and inundations as to give comparatively an 

 appearance of universality to the phenomena, and the final rains 

 might have been rapid and cataclysmal. 



Knowing as we do how readily men scoff at " far-fetched notions," 

 it has required some amount of courage to put even the simple ques- 

 tion — What has become of the water of the moon ? Doubtless the 

 moon had once ocean and air ; if so, What has become of them 1 is a 

 question not to be avoided by the geologist in the consideration of 

 the past, because if those waters have not been amalgamated with the 

 earthy and metallic substances of the moon, nor driven off into space, 

 nor attracted to the sun, which are not likely, their transference must 

 have taken place under the natural laws of gravitation to the earth. 

 When this was, mathematicians or astronomers may work out ; and 

 geologists may confirm their results from the recording pages of the 

 earth's crust. 



We beg, however, these remarks may be viewed as they are in- 

 tended — as a speculation. We do not attempt to prove that the 

 attraction of the earth would have been sufficient to draw away the 

 water of the moon in the form of highly rarified vapour. The idea 

 is not propounded as a theory. We know if not all, at least far 

 too many, of the difficulties to be opposed to even a general torrential 

 rain, to see our way clearly to surmount some of them. One thing, 

 however, is certain, there are waterless ocean-cavities on the moon, 

 and the question is well worth asking, or considering, Where have their 

 waters gone to ? 



