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of Thales, water, has also produced great changes. Half of 
America is still inundated with the ancient deposits of the 
Maragnon, of the Bio de la Plata, of the St. Lawrence and 
the Mississippi, and of all the rivers which increase in volume, 
thanks to the melting of the eternal snow of the highest 
mountains of the world, and which traverse the continent from 
one side to the other/ 
‘ These accumulated deluges have produced great marshes 
almost everywhere. The neighbouring districts have become 
uninhabitable, and the soil which ought to have been fertilized 
by the hand of man, produces fish. The same thing has 
happened in China and in Egypt, and a multitude of centuries 
have been consumed in making canals and in draining the 
ground. Add to these long disasters the irruptions of the 
sea, the countries it has invaded or deserted, the islands it has 
detached from the continents, and it will be found that more 
than 80,000 square leagues have been wrecked from east to 
west, from Japan to the Atlas/ 
Voltaire thus, with some accurate geographical knowledge, 
and with considerable point, argues against the popular notion 
of his day, of the persistence of all things. He then proceeds 
to argue in favour of, and against the Atlantis, and advances 
the evident former union of the Grecian Isles and Sicily with 
their mainlands as a suggestive proof of the subsidence of the 
land between the mainland and the Canaries. He states — on 
what authority is doubtful — that the Atlantic has but little 
depth between the Canaries and the mainland. 
Voltaire’s onslaught on Burnet is, of course, racy. He 
notices that ‘ one author, who has become more celebrated 
than useful by his theory of the earth, has pretended that the 
deluge wrecked the earth, and formed rocks and mountains, and 
put all into supreme confusion, and that one only sees a ruined 
world;’ and that ‘ the author of another theory not less celebrated, 
sees nothing but arrangement, and decides that without this de- 
luge this harmony would not have existed. Both consider the 
mountains to have followed the universal inundation. Burnet, in 
his eighth chapter, assures us that the earth before the deluge 
was regular, uniform, without mountains, valleys, and seas. 
The deluge did all that, and therefore we find comes d’ Ammon 
in the Apennines.’ He then jeers at Woodward with great 
success, and remarks, ‘ The greater number of the philosophers 
have placed themselves without ceremony in the place of God ; 
they think they can create an universe with a word.’ 
Voltaire asserts his right to examine, in consonance with the 
laws of probability, if this globe has ever been, or ever will be, 
so absolutely different from what it now is. He considers that 
people have only got to use their eyes. He examines the 
