western continents. As soon as vents were made through the rising crust, the accumulated vapors within would rush forth, and meeting with the excessive cold of that region, would condense and fall either in the form of snow or rain. After their escape, the ocean's bed might again sink down and the waters gradually return to their place. This supposition is made merely to illustrate that modification of Beaumont's theory which some geologists have adopted. H. De la Beche, a very candid and able living writer, seems to take essentially this view of the origin of the last deluge. And in presenting a paragraph or two from his writings, as well as those of other living and able geologists, our object will be as far as possible to exhibit the present state of opinion on the whole subject of the last deluge.

"In Europe," says De la Beche, "we have at least two accumulations of them (erratic blocks or bowlders), judging from their geological position at comparatively recent periods. One set of erratic blocks has been scattered from the central Alps outwards, on each side of the chain: the other has proceeded from a northward direction southward." After considering the origin of the first set of bowlders he thus proceeds: "The other great accumulation of erratic blocks seems due to some more general cause, since not only are the blocks scattered in great abundance over northern Europe, in a manner to show their northern origin, but those which occur in the northern parts of America, apparently in equal abundance, also point to a similar origin. We hence infer that some cause situated in the polar regions has so acted as to produce this dispersion of solid matter over a certain portion of the earth's surface. We know of no agent capable of causing the effect required, but running water." After intimating that the elevation of the bed of the northern ocean occasioned this deluge, he says, “such waves would necessarily tend to float the northern glaciers with their usual burdens of blocks of rock, lifting them to the southward; but their principal action would be felt where they reached the coasts, and the waves from being little more than great undulations of water became huge breakers," etc." The effect observed, would correspond with this hypothesis; for all the blocks have not come from great distances; they have been detached from various points. Many erratic blocks in England can be traced northward to their parent rock in the British Islands; and the like can be done in the United States.'

Researches in Theoretic Geology, p. 388, 389, 390. London 1834.

But though De la Beche seems from these extracts to be of opinion that a deluge of waters has rushed over the northern parts of the globe, yet he makes no attempt to identify this deluge with that of Noah. And in 1832 he says, that "solutions of the problem of erratic blocks seem not very practicable at present, and our attempts at general explanations can be considered little else than conjectures."* This difficulty of identifying any of the deluges of geology with that of Noah, has led several distinguished geologists of late to give up their former belief that the phenomena of diluvium did clearly point out the Noachian deluge. But they do not, therefore, maintain that geology furnishes any presumption against the occurrence of such a deluge; rather the contrary. "We now connect," says Prof. Sedgwick, a writer of great ability, "the gravel of the plains with the elevation of the nearest system of mountains," etc."That these opinions militate against opinions but a few years since held almost universally among us, cannot be denied. But theories of diluvial gravel, like all other ardent generalizations of an advancing science, must ever be regarded but as shifting hypotheses to be modified by every new fact, till at length they become accordant with all the phenomena of naBearing upon this difficult question there is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably establishedthat the vast masses of diluvial gravel scattered almost over the surface of the earth do not belong to one violent and transitory period."

ture.

"We ought to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic flood, etc." "Are then the facts of our science opposed to the sacred records? And do we deny the reality of a historic deluge? I utterly reject such an inference.In the narration of a great fatal catastrophe, handed down to us not in our sacred books only, but in the traditions of all nations, there is not a word to justify us in looking to any mere physical monuments as the intelligible records of that event; such monuments have never yet been found, and it is not intended perhaps that they ever should be found. We might I think rest content with such a general answer as this. But we may advance one step further. Though we have not yet found the certain traces of any great diluvian catastrophe, which we can

* Geological Manual, p. 177. London 1832. Second edition.

affirm to be within the human period; we have at least shown, that the paroxysms of internal energy accompanied by the elevation of mountain chains, and followed by mighty waves desɔlating whole regions of the earth, were a part of the mechanism of nature. And what has happened again and again from the most ancient up to the most modern period of the natural history of the earth, may have happened once during the few thousand years that man has been living on its surface. We have, therefore, taken away all anterior probability from the fact of a recent deluge; and we have prepared the mind, doubting about the truth of things of which it knows not either the origin or the end, for the adoption of this fact on the weight of historic testimony.'

In 1819, Mr. Greenough maintained, not only that "a deluge has swept ever every part of the globe, but probably the same deluge." But in 1834 he says, "Some fourteen years ago I advanced an opinion founded altogether upon physical and geological considerations, that the entire earth had, at an unknown period (as far as that word implies any definite portion of time), been covered by one general but temporary deluge. - New data have flowed in, and with the frankness of one of my predecessors, I also read my recantation. The vast mass of evidence which he (Mr. Lyell) has brought together in illustration of what may be called diurnal geology, convinces me, that if five thousand years ago a deluge did sweep over the entire globe, its traces can no longer be distinguished from more modern and local disturbances."1

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The opinion of Mr. Murchison corresponds essentially with the two last quoted. "From these and other writings of the present day," he says, we perceive that correct observations have now established that the diluvial and transported detritus of each great geographical division of Europe, when viewed on a great scale, can, for the most part, be traced to an axis of elevation within that region, so as each great mountain chain has been the source of the detritus covering the adjacent low coun

Rev. Prof. Sedgwick's Anniversary Address as president of the London Geological Society, Feb. 18, 1831.

A Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology, p. 155. London 1819.

Greenough's Anniversary Address before the London Geolog. Society, February, 1834.

try, we can no longer attribute such drifts of sedimentary matter to one particular diluvial current which has acted in any given direction."* Again, in an article on the "Gravel and Alluvia of South Wales and Siluria, as distinguished, etc." he says, "he does not think we have yet been furnished with a full explanation of any method by which such blocks (bowlders) have been transported to distances of 100 miles, (that is from Scotland to Lancashire, Cheshire, and North Shropshire). Having once ascertained that large distributions of them took place under the sea, the different heights at which we now find them, may, he supposes, be satisfactorily accounted for by movements of elevation and depression, acting upon the bed of the sea with unequal measures of intensity, raising up shells, gravel and bowlders, which have accumulated at the same period to the respective levels which they now occupy, etc."+

Perhaps the two individuals who have done most to vindicate the opinion from geological considerations of a universal flood, in comparatively recent times, are baron Cuvier and Rev. Dr. Buckland. Says the former, "I am of opinion then with De Luc and Dolomieu, that if there is any circumstance thoroughly established in geology, it is, that the crust of our globe has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, the epoch of which cannot be dated much further back than five or six thousand years ago; that this revolution had buried all the countries which were before inhabited by men and by the other animals that are now best known; that the same revolution had laid dry the bed of the last ocean, which now forms all the countries at present inhabited," etc. The great merit of baron Cuvier as a zoologist, and especially as a comparative anatomist, has rendered this opinion concerning a deluge almost oracular; although it is well known to geologists, that his qualifications to judge respecting difficult points in their science were not of the highest order.

Professor Buckland published a splendid quarto volume in 1823 on the geological evidence of a universal deluge. Cer

Murchison's Anniversary Address before the Lond. Geol. Society, Feb. 15, 1833.

London and Edinburgh Philos. Magazine for June 1836, p. 570. Essay on the Theory of the Earth, p. 165. New York 1818. See also Cuvier's Discourse on the Revolutions of the surface of the Globe, p. 179. Philadelphia 1831.

tain curious discoveries which he had made respecting the bones of animals and other matters found in caverns in England and Germany, furnished him with a new and most striking argument in favor of such an occurrence. To this he added the phenomena exhibited by the general shape and position of hills and vallies, by outliers, by deposites of gravel and bowlders, and their organic remains. These arguments were drawn out with great fairness, candor, and ability; and conducted him to the conclusion that "the discoveries of modern geology, founded on the accurate observation of natural phenomena, prove to a demonstration that there has been an universal inundation of the earth, though they have not yet shown by what physical cause it was produced.' "All these facts, whether considered collectively or separately, present such a conformity of proofs tending to establish the universality of a recent inundation of the earth as no difficulties or objections that have hitherto arisen are in any way sufficient to overrule."* A second volume of the Reliquiae was long promised by Dr. Buckland, but it never appeared; and it is stated in a late review of his Bridgewater Treatise, that he has abandoned the argument so eloquently drawn out. But as that review does not appear to have been written by one very friendly to Dr. Buckland, we are unable to state precisely what ground he takes at this time respecting a deluge.

The opinion of Rev. Mr. Conybeare, another distinguished English geologist, may be learned from the following extract. "The only two points, in which, as it appears to me, the scriptural narration and the phenomena of geology can possibly come into contact, are the recent date supposed to be assigned to the original creation of our globe in the first chapter of Genesis, and the record of the universal deluge; and with regard to the former of these points alone does any apparent opposition exist; for with regard to the latter, the evidences of geology, if not, (as some, including Cuvier, have argued), strongly confirmatory, are at least strictly accordant."+

Prof. Jameson, the veteran Scotch geologist, speaks of " those last upraisings of mountains which have scattered the diluvian gravel."

* Reliquiae Diluvianae, p. 228.

† London Christian Observer for 1834, p. 308.

Jameson's Edinburgh Phil. Journal, from Oct. 1832 to April 1833, p. 309.