TO THE 
HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND 
SHUTE BARRINGTON, L.L.D. 
LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM, &c. &c. 
My Lord, 
The investigation which has led me to the present work 
was begun in obedience to your Lordship’s immediate advice; I 
know not, therefore, to whom I can so fitly dedicate the results 
of an inquiry, which but for this timely encouragement I might 
never have undertaken. It has, already, produced conclusions, 
which throw new light on a period of much obscurity in the 
physical history of our globe; and, by affording the strongest 
evidence of an universal deluge, leads us to hope, that it will 
no longer be asserted, as it has been by high authorities, that 
geology supplies no proofs of an event in the reality of which the 
truth of the Mosaic records is so materially involved. 
