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domain, there are few species which do not die when they 
venture beyond it. To the same effect is the testimony of 
General Reid, in his book on the Law of Storms. On the 
10th of August, 1831, a fearful storm, he tells us, similar to 
some of those which recently ravaged St. Thomas, visited the 
island of Barbadoes. Such was the tremendous tempest, that 
the spray of the sea was carried inland for sixty miles, so that 
showers of salt water fell upon the land, and “ the whole of 
the fresh-water fish in the ponds of Major Leacock died.” 
Nor would the vegetable kingdom fare any better than the 
bulk of the finny tribes in a universal deluge. Immersion for 
twelve months in water would be sufficient to destroy all vege- 
tation and every seed save some of the hardier sort. From 
this point of view is not the olive-leaf which the dove brought 
in to Noah suggestive ? Does it not point in the direction of 
a. local deluge, which had not long covered the olive-tree, in 
the neighbourhood of which the Ark found a resting-place ? 
Another point, and our argument against the universality 
of the Deluge is closed. Whence was the water derived to 
encompass the globe to the mean depth of five miles above 
the level of the sea ? Ignorant as we still are about the con- 
tents of the interior of the globe, there will be few, we pre- 
sume, "who will still hold with Burnet that there is a vast abyss 
of waters under the crust, which abyss was discharged upon 
the surface in the days of Noah, and absorbed into the 
bowels of the earth again after the catastrophe. Neither will 
Whiston's fanciful theory find many supporters, that the peri- 
helion of a comet in close proximity to the earth so deranged 
the tides of the ocean on the surface, and the abyss in the 
interior of the globe, that a universal deluge was the appalling 
result. The general belief among those who cling to a uni- 
versal deluge is, that water sufficient to accomplish the catas- 
trophe was miraculously provided by God, and annihilated 
when the end for which it was created had been served. If 
we had any proof that such was the case, we should at once 
believe it. But the Mosaic narrative gives not the remotest 
hint of such a miraculous interposition. On the contrary, the 
historian distinctly specifies two causes which God was pleased 
to employ in execution of his judgment — the opening of the 
windows of heaven, an Orientalism for heavy and continuous 
rains ; and the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep, 
an Orientalism for the eruption of the sea upon the land. 
And it is demonstrable that the utmost amount of water pro- 
duced from these two sources would not inundate the globe 
to a depth exceeding a few inches. 
It has been well remarked upon this subject that “ argu- 
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