357 
We have equally striking illustrations of the conjecture into 
which scientific minds are ready to fall in the literature of later 
times. Steno, who has given us so much excellent geology, 
gives us also a good specimen of speculation in his explanation 
of the general deluge. “ If it shall be said that in the earth 
the centre of gravity is not always the same with the centre of 
th g figure, but that now and then it recedes from the one or 
the other side, according as the subterranean cavities are 
grown in divers places, it is easy to render a reason why 
the fluid which in the beginning of things covered all, left 
certain places dry and returned to them again. With the 
same ease may be explained the general deluge, if we place 
about the fire in the middle of the earth, a sphere of waters, 
or at least certain receptacles of them, whence without the 
motion of the centre, the pouring forth of the included water 
may be deduced.” So he goes on at great length to account 
for the Deluge by means of conjectural reasoning, which is as- 
suredly every whit as scientific as the best of the speculations 
of the present day. 
When we come to the geological speculations of modern 
science, we find them arranging themselves along the three 
lines of thought to which we have already referred. Where 
reason and true science stand waiting for light, imagination 
kindles the torch of fancy, and passes on. Werner worthily 
represents those who pass down to the beginnings of the 
earth's strata, and see old Chaos amid his watery desola- 
tions, commencing the work of uprearing the present order 
of things. It is not a little interesting to find, as we have 
already said, recent discoveries lending' so much countenance 
to Werner's ideas. Sir W. E. Logan's descriptions of the 
Laurentian rocks of Canada go very far in this direction. 
He has not only described the limestone formations inter- 
stratified with gneiss and granite, but he says, u Interstratified 
with the Laurentian limestones there are beds of conglomerate, 
the pebbles of which are themselves rolled fragments of 
still older laminated sand-rock, and the formation of these 
beds [that is of the beds of sand-rock from which these 
pebbles came] leads us still further into the past.” Speaking 
of these limestones still, he says, “ Of these calcareous masse?, 
it lias been ascertained that three, at least, belong* to the 
lower Laurentian. But as we do not yet know with cer- 
tainty either the base or the summit of the series, these three 
may be conformably followed by many more.”* All, therefore, 
* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, February 1st, 1865, pp. 46, 47 
