that the olive-leaf could not have been plucked off by the dove from a tree that floated at the surface of the waters. De Luc conceives that the olive-leaf was plucked off from a tree which grew on an island that had not been submerged'. Mr. Faber is in error when he thinks that a continuance of a hundred and fifty days at the bottom of the waters would not have destroyed the olive-trees; ten or fifteen days would have sufficed for that purpose. Besides, the violent motion of the waters would have suffered nothing to subsist at the surface of the earth; all vegetation would have been destroyed, or swept away." In the general correctness of these observations, the editor cannot but concur.

Long Residence of the Sea upon extensive portions of our Continents immediately before the last Revolution.

That the sea rested for a considerable period of time on many portions of our present lands, previously to its retreat into the bed which it now occupies, has been satisfactorily shown by De Luc. It would appear from his repeated observations in various parts of our continents, that numerous and very extensive strata of quartzose sand, together with beds of clay, marl, and other materials were chymically precipitated from the waters of the sea, at a period immediately preceding the great revolution; and that it is by a continuation of its last precipitation, that we find its new bed covered with a great abundance of sand 2.

1 Letter VI. § 18.

2

See Letter II. § 16. IV. § 32. In the 589th § of Vol. ii. of the Travels in France, &c., the author adduces the testimony of De

Many of those strata which abound with marine bodies, were evidently formed in the very places where they are now deposited, and indicate a long residence of the sea'. In Siberia, for example, fossil bones are frequently discovered in or beneath strata filled with shells. Thus, at a short distance from the river Iset, which discharges itself into the Tobol, there have been found, in a sandy bluish clay, the bones of elephants black at the exterior, and in a decayed state, together with shark's teeth; that bed of clay was covered by eight different strata of a marly yellow clay, sand, &c., of which the four lowest were micaceous. Mr. J. A. de Luc quotes the authority of Professor PALLAS for this particular fact; he observes that the operations of the sea must have been of long continuance on that spot, after the elephant bones and the shark's teeth had been buried in the blue clay; and states his opinion that a great part of

Saussure, in confirmation of his opinion, that the sand extended in strata over vast tracts of country in different parts of Europe, and similar to that on the bed of the sea, is the product of the latest precipitations in the ancient ocean. "It was not owing to incursions of the sea upon our continents, that it has covered them with so much sand: it deposited the sand, stratum by stratum, during its abode upon them." Letter V. § 9.

1 "We do not perceive in these loose strata," says the author, any sign of violent agitation in the water that produced them; they have been formed, like all the other strata, by deposits made at the bottom of a tranquil liquid, and all the extraneous bodies which they contain, were there enclosed," &c. Letter I. § 18. "I have seen bones of elephants taken from several spots which I have myself observed; the soil was composed of regular strata of different species, lying one over another; and thus plainly denoting, as well as some of which I am going more particularly to speak, that the sea was calm during their formation." Elem. Treat. § 325.

those bones must have been buried beneath the waters of the ocean, a long time previously to the last revolution 1. Mr. PARKINSON, in like manner, considers that the widely extended beds of sand and gravel so commonly occurring, with sandy clay, sometimes intermixed and sometimes interposed, were slowly deposited by the sea. Geol. Transact. Vol. I. pp. 327,

341.

It is further to be remarked, that those beds, altogether extraneous to the stony strata on which they had been formed beneath the waters of the ocean, have suffered the same ruptures, dislocations, and partial subsidences, as the stony strata2.

1 See Mr. J. A. de Luc's Memoir, noticed above, Vol. xix. of the Bibl. Univ.; and the second part, in the same volume, p. 260, et seq. In that Dissertation will be found several other instances, indicating a long residence of the waters of the ocean upon extensive portions of our present lands, antecedently to its last retreat. See also Letter I. § 15, et seq. and Letter IV. § 6. of this work; and Lettres sur l'Histoire de la Terre, &c. Vol. iii. p. 25; v. pp. 20, 356, 357.

In regard to the gravels which are found intermixed with the beds in question, those of flint, according to our author, proceed from the strata of chalk which were dissolved while still covered by the ancient sea, while those which are fragments of stony strata, chiefly primordial, originate in the revolutions which the bottom of the sea was so frequently undergoing. Mr. J. A. de Luc is of opinion that much of the gravel contained in the superficial soil, and which is composed of fragments of stony strata, was produced by the currents of the sea when it changed its bed, that is to say, at the period of the last revolution which the earth has undergone. See note, Letter V. § 9.

'See Travels in France, Vol. I. §§ 138, 311. II. §§ 601, 644, 753, 809. Geol. Travels, Vol. I. §§ 137, 298, 314, 321, 378, 380. Vol. III. § 1007. "I have seen," says the author, "in Germany, in Italy, in France, in England, sandy strata containing marine

Referring, in his remarks on KIRWAN'S Geological Essays, to the vast accumulations of shells found in loose and superficial soils, "these shells," says De

66

Luc, are found in regular strata of marl, argil, and different kinds of sand. In some places, those strata continue the same to the greatest depth we can reach; in others, their nature changes as we penetrate the soil; and then it most commonly happens that, after having met with a certain family of shells in a particular class of strata, we find different families in those either above or below, in the same manner as we observe the families to change in the stony strata, where they form whole mountains. Lastly, the loose

bodies, fractured and inclined together with the stony strata which they cover, whose sections are seen beneath them in spots where a subsidence has taken place on one of the sides of the fracture, and sometimes opposite the great subsidence, namely, in the cliffs on the sea-coast." Abrégé de Principes et de Faits, &c., p. 86.

Mr. J. A. de Luc, the younger, speaking of the vertical strata in Alum Bay, in the Isle of Wight, says, "I observed them in the year 1797; they are extremely numerous, and I was much struck by them. Among those strata of marl and clay, there was a bed of flinty nodules in a vertical position, as well as all the strata on the right and left........Those vertical strata extend across the island from west to east; here then we have a striking instance of argillaceous strata, which have participated in the catastrophes of the chalk strata beneath; it is a very important phenomenon, which serves at the same time to prove that the British channel was formed by subsidence, and that it is thus the coasts of France were separated from those of England. For a detailed account of Mr. J. A. de Luc's observations in Alum Bay, see Geol. Travels, Vol. II. § 600. A remarkable instance of the phenomenon in question was observed by that able geologist, in 1817, in Piedmont, in the neighbourhood of Annone, between Asti and Alexandria. Bibl. Univ. (Sc. et Arts) Vol. XIX. p. 121. note.

strata, which are always parallel to each other, are in various places fractured, and highly inclined, as well as the stony strata which they cover."

From these facts De Luc deduced the following important inferences:-that while these shells directly prove our continents to have been formerly covered by the sea, it is no less evident that they could not have been deposited by the waters of the deluge; for, in that case, the utmost confusion would prevail throughout all the loose substances on the surface of our soils;-secondly, that these regularly disposed strata were produced from the last precipitations which took place in the sea, when marine animals existed at its bottom;—and, thirdly, that the sea retired from our continents, by changing its bed1.

Some links of connection which subsist between the facts in geology that have here been noticed, and the Mosaic account of the deluge, will now be pointed

out.

SECTION III.

Connection between the Mosaic narrative of the Deluge and Geological Phenomena.

The phenomena of the earth are in essential agreement with the prediction of the flood to Noah, purporting that all the inhabited parts of the globe should be destroyed. "And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled

1 Element. Treat. § 326. Letter V. § 8.

D