pher, "presents in all its parts the features of a grand ruin; the confusion and overthrow of most of its strata, the irregular succession of those which seem to remain in their original situations, the wonderful variety which the direction of the veins and the forms of the caverns display, the immense heaps of confused and broken substances, the transportation of enormous blocks to a great distance from the mountains of which they appear to have formed a part," do not lead us as he would intimate "to periods far anterior to the existence of the human race," but to a mighty catastrophe by which the whole structure of our globe has been dislocated, and its ancient strata broken up, and separated by the intervention of new ones formed of animal and vegetable remains.

When the Almighty formed our globe from the original chaos, and projecting it into space bade it perform its diurnal and annual revolutions, he first weighed it in his balance, and moulded it so as it might answer to the action of those mighty powers by whose constant impulse or impact those revolutions were to be maintained; and if a central void was necessary he wanted not the means to produce and maintain it. When the power called attraction tended to drive all to the centre, the repellant

1 Malte-Brun Syst. of Geogr. L. i. 192.

principle might be so stationed as to counteract it, and keep the earth's crust at its assigned distance. To compare great things with small, he who made the rain-drop made also the airbubble, the one to fall, the other to rise.

The word of God, in many places, speaks of an abyss of waters under the earth, as distinct from the ocean though in communication with it,' and also as contributing to form springs and rivers.2 Scientific men, in the present day, appear disposed to question this; the Geologist, though he may regard the granitic strata as forming the base, as it were, of the crust of the earth, seems rather to view it as containing a focus of heat, than a magazine of infinite waters; from whence are partly derived the springs and rivers that water the earth's surface, and ultimately make good to the ocean its whole loss by evaporation. "Springs," says the author above quoted, "are so many little reservoirs, which receive their waters from the neighbouring ground, through small lateral channels." He allows, however, that the origin of springs cannot be referred to one exclusive cause, and associates with that just mentioned, the precipitation of atmospheric vapours attracted by high lands, the dissolving of ice, the filtering of sea

3

1 Comp. Job, xxviii. 14, xxxviii. 16, 17.-Genes. xlix. 25.Deut. xxxiii. 13.-Jonah, ii. 6, &c.

2 Ps. lxxviii. 15, 16.-Prov. viii. 24.

3 See Appendix, note 9.

waters, and the explosion of subterraneous vapours. He makes no direct mention of a storehouse of waters in the bosom of the earth as in any case the source of springs and rivers, but allows that "the phenomena of capillary tubes may obtain in its interior. The sea-waters, deprived of their salt and bitter elements, may ascend through the imperceptible pores of several rocks, from which, being disengaged by the heat, they will form those subterraneous vapours to which many springs owe their origin." A very slight alteration of this passage would make it harmonize with the Scripture account of the matter. If, for "some rocks," we substitute through the rocky strata, and to the "sea-waters" add received into the abyss, it would amount to nearly the same thing. It was an ancient opinion, mentioned in Plato's Phædon, that there is a flux and reflux of the waters of our globe, a kind of systole and diastole, into and from Tartarus or the great abyss, which produce seas, lakes, rivers, and fountains.1 That all the causes mentioned above contribute to the formation of the rivers that water the earth, especially the clouds and vapours that gather round the tops of the mountains and high hills I am ready to admit, at the same time I must contend that the principal reservoir from

1 Platonis Dialogi. Ed. Forst. Phædon. § §.

which they are supplied has its station under the earth.

Writers on this subject seem to speak as if the source of all rivers was in mountainous or hilly countries, but though the mightiest rivers of the globe originate in such situations, there is a very large number of considerable streams whose source is not particularly elevated, especially in the flat parts of England; and there are few rivers that do not receive some supply from lesser ones, having their rise in low grounds, in their course. The practice, in all countries, of digging wells indicates a downward source of water.

In the Mosaic account of the deluge it is stated, that the waters prevailed above the tops of all the mountains fifteen cubits-now the highest mountain in the globe, Dhawalagiri, a peak of the Himmaleh range in northern India, is five miles above the level of the sea, this will make a sphere of waters, inclosing the whole globe as its nucleus, of five miles in depth above the level of the sea, but in calculating the immense additional body of water thus burying the whole globe, deductions must be made for the mountains and the lands elevated above that level, which would considerably decrease the total amount. But, even then, how vast would be the increase. If two fifths of this body were deducted, a deluge of rain for forty days and forty

nights over the whole globe, would fall infinitely short of the amount of water required to cover it to this height. The mean quantity of rain that now falls upon the earth in the course of a whole year is short of three feet; there must therefore have been an outbreak of waters from a source which could supply all that was necessary to accomplish the will of the Almighty, and make the earth itself a ruin, as well as sweep off its inhabitants; and where shall we look for this but to the abyss that coucheth beneath the earth, whose fountains, as the sacred historian tells us, were broken up. If we consider the diameter of our globe, and that the ocean in depth is not supposed to exceed the highest mountains, we may conceive that in a spheroid, whose diameter is 8000 miles, allowing for the depth of the crust of the earth, there is space for a treasure-house of water, of sufficient amplitude to supply what the heavens could not furnish, to raise the diluvial waters to the height decreed in the Divine counsels. It seems now agreed amongst geologists and mineralogists that traces of the action of fire, as well as water, are very visible amongst the present strata of this globe: when the waters of the abyss were sent out from their hidden receptacle, it must be by the agency of some potent cause employed by the Deity, equal to the production of the effect he intended.

In the present state of the globe, volcanos, or