ON GEOLOG Y A'NB GEOGNOSY. 403 
state (some of them in one, some in another), and then they 
set themselves to account for the changes which, in their 
opinion, a dehjge of water would produce upon it. 
Burnet, for example, in 1681, supposed the Earth to 
have been an immense abyss of water, covered by a smooth 
crust, which, being broken and deranged at the Deluge, 
produced, by its fragments, mountains, islands, and all the 
great irregularities we now perceive on the globe. Wood- 
ward, in fancied that, at the Flood, a suspension for 
a short time of the attraction of cohesion took place among 
the particles of all mineral substances, and that the globe, 
being thus, as it were, dissolved and converted into a soft 
paste, shells sunk into it, and so are now found in the 
heart of solid rocks, and at a great depth below ground. 
Whiston, in 1708, imagined that the Earth was formed 
from the atmosphere of a comet, and that the Deluge was 
produced by the tail of another ! Others, paying less at- 
tention, or we may say no attention at all, to the accounts 
we have in Scripture, said the world was an extinguished 
sun, or a vitrified globe, on which, as it cooled, the vapours 
gradually condensed, forming seas and lakes, which after- 
wards deposited calcareous matter. Such were the fancies 
of Leibnitz and Descartes in 1683 and 1749- But a stil. 
more extraordinary fancy (Quid tam absurdum quod non 
dictum fuerit ab aliquo Geologo ?) w^as that of Demaillet^. 
who imagined the Earth to have been entirely covered with 
water for some thousands of years, and that men were then 
a sort of fishes, and lived in that element. Buffon's ima- 
gination seems to have been guided in its flight very much 
by that of Leibnitz. Both held the Earth to have been 
originally a fiery mass, gradually cooled down, and ar- 
ranged sa as to be at last rendered a fit habitation for 
plants and animals. Only Leibnitz v/ill have it to have 
been an entire sun, while Buflfon tells us it was only a 
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