XOTES AND QUERIES. 
37 
5. That the iacrements of quantity and momentum of the seas act by slow- 
degrees on the land of the affected hemisphere, so as to produce sufficient space 
for their ovm accumulations, till in sufficient time the space occupied by the 
land is reduced in proportion to the accumulating spaces occupied by the seas. 
6. That as the seas encroach on the land in one hemisphere they retire from 
the other, on the known principle of their equilibrium ; but, during the operation 
of the perihelion maxima, they are also accumulated in volume sufficient to make 
new encroachments in the land, adding more and more to their momenta in each 
following year. 
7. That (in 1S12,) the perihelion forces operate in maxima on the 31st of 
December, over the parallel of twenty three degrees seven minutes south ; that 
these forces are now moving northward, at such a rate as that in the year 4,719 
they wiU arrive at a middle southern declination ; in 6,163 will act over the 
equator; in S,207 wiU advance to a middle northern declination, producing 
sensible effects on that hemisphere ; and, between the year 8,207 and 15,181 
will probably be the means of covering the northern hemisphere with sea, 
nearly as the southern hemisphere is covered at present. 
8. That in tracing the progression of these forces through former periods, it 
appears that they passed the equator to the south about the year 4,002 
before Christ, producing probably such terrestrial phenomena as those described 
in the first chapter of Genesis ; and that they reached a middle southern decli- 
nation about the year 2,258, producing probably such sensible effects in that 
hemisphere, as are described in the ^Mosaic and other accounts of the deluge. 
9. That this motion of the ]:)erihelion forces over different parallels of terres- 
trial latitude, by producing an alternate prepondency of seas in both hemispheres, 
sufficiently accounts for the marine strata, and for all the marine phenomena 
observed upon or under the surface of the land, the gradual operation of chemical 
agencies being sufficient to account for the substantial changes in the bodies 
themselves. 
10. That, if the frequent discovery of tropical remains in the latitude of 
Britain, be considered as evidence that these remains were natives of these 
latitudes, the change of climate may be referred to the diminished angle 
formed by the planes of the equator and ecliptic, which takes place at the rate 
of fifty-two seconds in a century, and of a degree in above six thousand nine 
hundred years ; and which would have been equal to forty-five degrees at seven 
revolutions of the perihelion point, or one hundred and forty-nine years ago." 
This paper is signed "Common Sense." It certainly may take rank as an 
honoured curiosity of geological literature. — G^rge E. Robek.ts. 
Flixt Implements in the Drift. — The recent finding of some Flint 
Implements, evidently the work of man, in a strafiim which geologists have 
been accustomed to consider of a date long anterior to the human era, has 
given rise to much discussion and conjecture ; some appearing ready to achnit, 
(though no human remains were found witli them) that this discovery carries 
back the creation of man to an almost incalculably remote period ; though so 
many existing facts tend to demonstrate his comparatively recent origin — 
facts that are quite independent of scripture-chronology, or the testimony of 
tradition. 
By what means these manufactured flints become imbedded in the formation 
referred to is a question that, perhaps, can never have a perfectly satisfactory 
solution ; but an idea that seems to have some possibly explanatory bearing on 
the point, was suggested to me in reading the other day an account of the 
construction of the Thames Tunnel. 
In the course of making the excavations for this work, the difficulties that 
arose from the nature of the soil in some parts induced the contractors to pro- 
cure a diving bell, for the purpose of examining the bottom of the river. On 
