272 
EOCENE PERIOD. 
[Ch. XIX. 
treated, upon the restraining of the rain and the passing of a 
wind over the earth. On the contrary, the olive-branch, 
brought back by the dove, seems as clear an indication to us 
that the vegetation was not destroyed, as it was then to Noah 
that the dry land was about to appear. 
We have been led with great reluctance into this digression, 
in the hope of relieving the minds of some of our readers from 
groundless apprehension respecting the bearing of many of the 
views advocated in this work. They have been in the habit of 
regarding the diluvial theory above controverted as alone 
capable of affording an explanation of geological phenomena in 
accordance with Scripture, and they may have felt disapproba- 
tion at our attempt to prove, in a former chapter *, that the 
minor volcanos on the flanks of Etna may, some of them, be 
more than 10,000 years old. How, they would immediately 
ask, could they have escaped the denuding force of a diluvial 
rush of waters? The same objection may have presented 
itself when we quoted, with so much respect, the opinion of a 
distinguished botanist, that some living specimens of the Bao- 
bab tree of Africa, or the Taxodium of Mexico, may be five 
thousand years old f . Our readers may also have been 
astonished at the high antiquity assigned by us to the greater 
part of the European alluviums, and the many different 
ages to which we refer them J, as they may have been taught 
to consider the whole as the result of one recent and simul- 
taneous inundation. Lastly, they may have felt some dis- 
appointment at observing, that we attach no value whatever 
to the hypothesis of M. Elie de Beaumont, adopted by Pro- 
fessor Sedgwick, that the sudden elevation of mountain-chains 
' has been followed again and again by mighty waves deso- 
lating whole regions of the earth §,' a phenomenon which, 
according to the last-mentioned of these writers, has c taken 
* Chap. viii. p. 100. f See above, p. 99. 
% P. 147. § P. 101. 
