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first men in our regions, phenomena without example since, such 
as those of the first glacial period, we arc naturally led to remember 
that the old tradition of Persia, perfectly conformable to the 
Biblical account of the fall of humanity through the sin of its first 
ancestor, ranges in the first rank amongst the chastisements which 
followed this fault, at the same time with death and sickness, the 
appearance of an intense and permanent cold, which man could 
hardly sustain, and which rendered a great portion of the world 
uninhabitable. A similar tradition existed also in the songs of 
the Edda, — the Voluspa.” 
25. I extract the following passages from the first Fargan of the 
Yendidad : * * * § — 
As the first and best of regions and countries, I, who am Ahura-Masda, 
created Airyana-vaeja of the good creation; then Aura-mainyus, who is 
full of death, created an opposition to the same, — a great serpent, and 
winter which the daevas have created ; ten winter months are there, two 
summer months. . . . 
This is about the present climate of Novaia Zemlia. 
* * * * * * 
Upon the corporeal world will the evil of winter come, 
Wherefore a vehement destroying frost will arise, 
Where snow will fall in great abundance 
On the summits of the mountains, on the breadth of the heights : 
From these places, 0 Yima, let the cattle depart. &c. &c. 
26. It has been too little noticed that Scripture evidently indi- 
cates a mitigation of the curse on the earth after the Deluge. f 
The curse upon the ground in connection with the sin of Adam, 
the irreverent transgressor, opens the sad history of the cursed 
antediluvian world; but the accepted sacrifice of the “reverent 
worshipper J” looks forward to a renewed world over which the bow 
of promise displays, in the varied and yet united beauty of its 
glorious hues, the token of the renewed blessings fresh from the 
hand of a now reconciled and pardoning God. The very words 
used in the Septuagint, in reference to the acceptance of Noah’s 
sacrifice, are again used in the New Testament in reference to the 
acceptable sacrifice of Christ (Eph. v. 2). 
27. In order to present clearly before the mind the claim for 
the relative antiquity of the human race founded on recent re- 
searches, I take a table§ of sedimentary and fossiliferous strata, and 
divide it roughly into periods, which may be admitted, for argument’s 
* Avesta, the religious books of the Parsees. Spiegel’s Trans., Hertford, 
U.S., 1864, p. 3. t See Gen. viii. 21. 
t See the old Chaldean name of Noah. 
§ By H. W. Bristow, F.R.S., F.G.S., Director of Geol. Survey Eng and 
Wales ; Life Groups and Distribution, by R. Etheridge, F.R.S. 
