sea.

accord neither with scripture, with mathematics, nor with natural philosophy. Yet his system, though ill conceived and worse arranged, seduced many by the lustre of a few striking facts; for he was better informed, than any preceding writer, of the superficial materials of which this globe is composed. These materials, says he, are all deposited in beds or strata; in many of which are shells, and other productions of the These beds are all horizontal, and placed over each other, like matters transported by the waters, and deposited in the form of sediment. The materials of the different strata, he asserts, are arranged according to their specific gravities. But this assertion is not true; for we every day see solid rocks placed over clay, sand, pit coal, bitumen, and other comparatively light bodies. All the strata which compose the earth, says he, from the top of the highest mountains to the deepest mines, are placed according to their respective specific gravities; and hence, the whole must have been in a state of dissolution, and precipitated at the same time. But, at what time, let us demand with Buffon, and in what

menstruum was it dissolved? In the water, says Woodward, and at the time of the deluge. But there was not water enough on the globe to produce that effect, for there is more earth than

water;

water; and the bottom of the sea itself is earth? But, says he, there was enough of water in the central parts of the earth. We reply, however, that water could not dissolve rocks and metals, especially in forty days, the time of the waters remaining on the earth. That signifies not, replies he; the event did happen. When it was asked him, how the waters of the abyss could dissolve the whole earth, and yet preserve the shells he answered, he never asserted that the water was a dissolvent, but, from facts, it was clear the earth had been dissolved, and that the shells had been preserved. But, if it were further pressed upon him, that, supposing the laws of cohesion and gravity could have been suddenly stopped, and that the dissolution of the ancient world could have been supposed capable of explanation-still, why were the shells not dissolved? To this he was mute; he could give

no answer..

LET

LETTER VII.

NOTWITHSTANDING the glaring delusion of the theorists, whom I have already mentioned, and the positive certainty their writings gave, that it was impossible to offer demonstrative evidence on such a subject as creation, the game was still to be followed; and sportsmen to the full as eager as Burnet, Whiston, or Woodward, took the field. Among the foremost were Bourguet, Leibnitz, Steno, and Le Cat. It would be needless to take a review of each. I shall confine myself therefore to the latter.

Mons. Le Cat, who published his thoughts about the year 1744, supposes, that in the beginning, the substance whence metals, stones, earth, &c. were to be formed, were soft masses of a kind of mud. The surface of the earth, says he, was regular, without hills or vallies. The earth was a globe or regular spheroid. The sun and moon were afterwards created. The fluid, which covered the earth, became agitated

by

by the violent motion of the flux and reflux. The mud on which this fluid rested was variously driven. This agitation encreasing, part of the mud became exposed, and it dried. Continents were thus formed. The materials of the earth, being more compact and solid, the sea continually excavated its bed. The continents, consequently, continually encreased: though they never arrived at a positive standard; for from the continual retreat of the sea, says he, and the excavation of the earth, this globe is doomed to be at last so perfectly undermined, as to produce a confluence of the sea, from hemisphere to hemisphere. The earth will become like a hollow orange, and its figure only be preserved by its shell. This shell also, being attenuated, will fail, and with it the surface of the earth will tumble in. A new chaos will take place, and there will be a general mixture of all its parts parts and productions. As at first, however, the earth will again revive, and thus we shall have a periodical dissolution and renovation according to that text of scripture: "The foundations of the earth shall perish: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shall God change them, and they shall be changed." Psalm. cii. In regard to the fossil shells every

where

Can

where discovered, Le Cat supposed they were buried in the earth prior to the deluge. First, because these shells, so co-acervated, or dispersed in several parts of the mountains, prove beyond dispute, that these mountains were posterior to the formation of the earth. Secondly, because these mountains did not rise on a sudden, but gradually, and consequently, are to be considered as accidental to our globe. Though here, indeed, Le Cat differed from his contemporary Voltaire, who very summarily gave these heaps of fossil shells to a less powerful cause. one doubt, says Voltaire, that pilgrims left them either by design or accident on these mountains? Nothing is more clear, "Si nous faisons réflexion à la foule innombrable de pelerins qui partoient a pied de Saint Jacques en Galice, et de toutes les provinces pour aller à Rome par le MontCenis, chargés de coquilles a leurs bonnets." But, did pilgrims with shells in their bonnets, it might have been asked the philosopher of Ferney, ever traverse the Cordelliers, or the other unchristian mountains of the globe, where shells are to be found in even still greater profusion?

The system of Le Cat, as must be the fate of every system of a creation, was proved to be contrary