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rising above the level of the sea of the Scandinavian coasts. Sir Charles 
L} 7 ell was the chief witness to this supposed fact, that the coast of Sweden 
has risen so many inches per annum ; but in the Geological Magazine for the 
month of March last year, or thereabouts, will be found a perfect confutation 
of all that so-called scientific evidence. The Earl of Selkirk went over the 
same ground as Sir Charles Lyell, and made investigations at every place 
where Sir Charles had been where he supposed he had found proofs of the 
land having risen, as well as other parts of the coast, and the Earl found there 
were no such proofs of this imagined rise. All the evidence that could be 
gathered might just as well be used to prove the depression as the rise of 
land, all depending upon whether the tides happened to be high or low at 
the time. That fact is also on record in the scientific journal of the Geological 
Society of this metropolis ; so that, for these two very strong so-called facts, 
there is really no scientific foundation at all. With reference to the former, 
I must briefly point out how very much depends upon it. It is not merely 
that we have it proved from historical testimony which is unquestionable, 
that the mountains of Auvergne were erupted in the fifth century of the 
Christian era, and that their cones are not of great antiquity ; but we must 
recollect that the period assigned to the fossil man of St. Denise and the flint 
implements of the valley of the Somme, and many other supposed proofs of 
the antiquity of these districts of France, all vanish together, when it is 
proved that these mountain-cones are not of the enormous antiquity which 
had been assigned to them. Their age has no longer to be counted by 
millions or thousands of years, but only by a few hundreds. You will see, 
therefore, that Mr. Davison’s geological proofs are by no means of that 
scientific character which he has assumed for them. Then, again, with 
reference to Professor Sedgwick’s recantation of his former testimony to the 
universality of the Flood, I may remark that the very fact that Professor 
Sedgwick and Dr. Buckland did at one time hold that there were evidences 
of a universal flood must go for something, even if they adopted another 
theory afterwards. After that retractation, when they considered that the 
evidence in favour of the universality of the Flood was doubtful, and that the 
Flood might not be universal, — that is, when they took up with the nebular 
theory, and began to adopt the consequent theories of the vast antiquity of 
the various strata, — Dr. Cockburn, in 1844, at the meeting of the British 
Association in York, publicly challenged Professor Sedgwick and others who 
maintained those views, to defend them, as he was prepared, as a practical 
geologist, to account for all the facts of geology, in accordance with the 
ordinary mode of interpreting the Scriptures, including the six days’ 
creation, and the universal flood. His challenge was not accepted, and Pro- 
fessor Sedgwick said he was not prepared to defend the nebular theory. In 
other parts of Mr. Davison’s paper we are told that, in order to have a 
universal flood that would cover all the mountains, it must have been a flood 
that would have reached to five miles in height. But that is assuming that 
at the time of the Deluge there were mountains five miles high ; and I am 
not certain that there is any geological evidence of that, while I think that 
