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of the Almighty’s intention to destroy the earth, as well as its in- 
habitants, “ God said — Behold, I will destroy them with the 
EARTH *, ” conclude that all the strata of the antediluvian earth 
were actually dissolved, and their constituent corpuscles separated 
one from another ; and that, in this state of separation, they were 
mixed with a large quantity of water, so that the whole was reduced 
to a fluid colluviesf. The attempt to determine what changes 
were actually effected at this period, cannot be expected to prove 
very successful ; but perhaps a near approach to truth would be, 
the supposition that the force of this immense quantity of fluid matter 
must have been such, as to have destroyed the whole of the original 
surface, and to have considerably deepened and widened those 
excavations which had contained the antediluvian waters ; whilst, by 
the falling of vast subverted masses, other cavities would be filled, 
and former channels choked up. By the violent agitations which 
the waters must for a considerable time have endured, the earthy 
matters they contained must have suffered the highest degree of 
attenuation, and division ; and, by their gradual deposition in those 
situations in which the waters were less agitated, or where they 
became stagnant, must have formed horizontal strata, where the 
surface on which they were deposited was flat ; and new mountains, 
where this deposition was made on the elevated subaqueous remains 
of former mountains. 
Possessing no other data from which we can infer what form the 
surface of the antediluvian world bore, we can only rest on the 
mention of its rivers, and its high hills, which give us reason to 
suppose it might have borne some affinity with that which the pre- 
sent surface of the earth presents to our view : and the sides of the 
hills with their correspondent valleys, and the extended plains, it 
may be concluded, were covered with their appropriate tribes of 
* Genesis vi. 13. 
f A Treatise on the Deluge, by A. Calcott, 1761. 
