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within the scope of our endeavours to explain it by a purely physical inter- 
pretation. With regard to the origin of the account in Genesis, I believe 
Mr. George Smith’s remarkable discoveries in the libraries of the Assyrian 
kings may throw some light upon it. I will argue on the subject apart from 
the question of inspiration ; for the object of the paper now before us is to 
introduce physical causes— at least, in part — to account for what we read in 
the Biblical narrative. It is a curious fact that geologists seem now inclined 
to adopt somewhat more extensively, the theory of fire instead of that of water, 
as a mechanical agent, though it is scarcely probable that we shall have the 
old battle fought over again between the Plutonists and Neptunists. There are 
the theories of Mr. Belt, however, and of Mr. Croll and others, concerning 
the glacial epoch ; while the first of these endeavours to account, also, for 
the Deluge by means of melting ice. Thus we have two exactly opposite 
causes suggested to account for the same phenomenon ; and it is for those 
who take either side to accept the theory which accords best with their own 
views. With regard to the primary or fundamental cause of the Deluge, 
Professor Challis proposes to begin with what — so far as I understand it — 
the facts do not warrant ; and that is, an increased heat in the centre of the 
earth. If he introduces such a physical cause, the question may be 
asked, Where are you to stop ? or where are you to bring in miraculous 
agency, and where do you limit purely physical causes ? He looks to 
physical causes as far as he can, and beyond that to miraculous agencies ; 
but why should he assume the latter just because at a certain point the 
causes cannot be explained, but which, by aid of more extended knowledge, 
would probably prove to be purely natural as well. He ought to show why 
some causes are physical and others miraculous. Now, granting his supposi- 
tion, we may observe that the results due to his supposed igneous cause are 
quite as easily explained by aid of the phenomena of the glacial epoch as well. 
He compares the earth to a sort of bubble. The central heat causes the 
upheaval of the sea-bottom, which in turn upheaves the water, and then the 
evaporation resulting from increased heat, produces torrents of rain. But 
regarding the same phenomenon from the glacial point of view, the exposure 
of a certain area of the sea-bottom is accounted for in a totally different way, 
even to its being thrust up, though not by the expansive force of heat from 
below. Similarly with regard to rain : there is strong evidence of a great 
“pluvial period” — referred to by Mr. Tylor the other day — subsequent to 
the glacial period, when the vapour, instead of condensing as snow to 
increase the ice-caps, came down as rain. Thus we have two phenomena — 
the exposure of a certain portion of the now submarine area (by the removal 
of a large body of water by evaporation and its subsequent condensation as 
ice at the polar regions), as well as a great pluvial period, and both arrived 
at from totally opposite sources. Professor Challis alludes to the origin of 
mountains as caused by molten matter bursting through and forming their 
substance ; whereas it is well known that it is only volcanoes that are con- 
structed of ejected matter, and that, too, without any upheaval of their 
