436 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
tlie supposed identification of some of his fossils with those of recent ani- 
mals, he was induced to refer the circumstance to ' a change in the situa- 
tion of this globe respecting the sun,' — in other words, to a ' change in the 
ecliptic' Here he departs from his principle of explaining the past phe- 
nomena by present causes. Kewton long since declared, in reference to a 
similar supposition borrowed by Burnet from an Italian author, Alles- 
sandro degli Allessandri, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, that 
' there was ever^^ presumption in astronomy against any former change in 
the inclination of the earth's axis ;' and Laplace has since strengthened the 
arguments of Newton, against the probability of any former revolution of 
this kind. 
"It may be a question, however, whether the mental stock now to be 
dealt with by the geologist does not yield a truer appreciation of the dura- 
tion of time in which the movements of the stellar and solar systems have 
gone on, than could be afforded by tlie observations and calculations of 
the astronomer in the times of ^S^ewton and Laplace : whether the in- 
adequacy of the analogy, based by Cuvier on the knowledge of the cha- 
racters of a species during a period of 3000 years, of such seeming fixity of 
specific characters, to the effects of influences on generations succeeding 
each other during 300,000 years, may not be ap^Dlicable to the case of New- 
ton, considering the results of his observations and calculations under a 
preoccupation of the mind by the theological age of the world. 
" Hunter's recourse to ' a change in the ecliptic,' as well as to ' some at- 
tractive external principle producing a great and permanent tide,' such as 
"VThiston's comet, e.g., was however the consequence of a miscouception 
or misinterpretation of the phenomena which those hypothetical causes 
were invoked to explain. 
"Hunter believed, for example, that the elephants' remains found in 
northern and temperate latitudes belonged to the same species, or at most 
to a variety of the same species of elephant, as that which now lives in 
tropical regions. Its specific distinction from the existing tropical ele- 
phants was then as little understood as the specific distinction of the 
African from the Asiatic elephants. 
" The moment that zoology and comparative anatomy had made such 
progress as to discern constant differences interpreted as specific distinc- 
tions, and to apply the same principle to the differentiation of the fossil 
elephant of northern regions from either of the existing tropical kinds, the 
necessity for calling in a cataclysm, either through a hypothetical shift in 
the ecliptic, or the attraction of the ocean upon the continents by a comet, 
no longer existed." 
Hunter's observations on the inadequacy of a pre-supposed Mosaic 
deluge to account for the manifold evidences of aqueous action which geo- 
logy has revealed to us, we must quote : — 
"History gives us no determined account of this change of the waters ; 
but as the Sacred History mentions the whole surface of the earth having 
been deluged with water, the natural historians have laid hold of this, and 
have conceived that it would account for the whole. Forty days' water 
overfiowiug the dry land could not have brought such quantities of sea- 
productions on its surface ; nor can we suppose thence, taking all possible 
circumstances into consideration, that it remained long on the whole sur- 
face of the earth; therefore there was no time for their being fossilized; 
they could ovAj have been left, and exposed on the surface. But it would 
appear that the sea has more than once made its incursions on the same 
place ; for the mixture of land- and sea-productions now found on the land 
IS a proof of atleabt two changes having taken place." 
