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 raina 
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 ? is a 
question not to be avoided by the geologist in the consideration of 
the past, because if those watei*s 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 ? 
