228 SUMMARY OF FACTS PROVING AN UNIVERSAL DELUGE. 
causes, that are now, or appear ever to have been in action, since the 
retreat of the diluvian waters. 
VIII. The analogous occurrence of similar phenomena in almost 
all the regions of the world that have hitherto been scientifically 
investigated, presenting a series of facts that are uniformly consistent 
with the hypothesis of a contemporaneous and diluvial origin. 
IX. The perfect harmony and consistency in the circumstances of 
those few changes that now go on, ( e . g. the formation of ravines and 
gravel by mountain torrents; the limited depth and continual growth 
of peat bogs ; the formation of tufa, sand-banks, deltas, coral reefs, and 
streams of lava; and the filling up of lakes, estuaries, and marshes,) 
with the hypothesis which dates the commencement of all such 
operations at a period not more ancient than that which our received 
chronologies assign to the deluge. 
All these facts, whether considered collectively or separately, 
present such a conformity of proofs, tending to establish the uni¬ 
versality of a recent inundation of the earth, as no difficulties or 
objections that have hitherto arisen are in any way sufficient to 
overrule. 
In the full confidence that these difficulties will at length be 
removed by the further extension of physical observations, we may 
for the present rest satisfied with the argument that numberless 
phenomena have been already ascertained, which without the admis¬ 
sion of an universal deluge, it seems not easy, nay, utterly impossible 
to explain. 
