geologists give the name of diluvium, as being apparently the produce of some vast flood, or of the sea thrown into unusual agitation. It seems to indicate that, at the time when it was laid down, much of the present dry land was under the ocean—a supposition which we shall see supported by other evidence.' 'Connected with these phenomena are certain rock surfaces in the slopes of hills, and elsewhere, which exhibit groovings and scratchings, such as we might suppose would be produced by a quantity of loose. blocks hurried along over them by a flood.' 'Finally, I may advert to certain long ridges of clay and gravel, which arrest the attention of travellers on the surface of Sweden and Finland,' &c. We thus acquire the idea of a powerful current moving from north-west to south-east, carrying, besides mud, masses of rock which furrowed the solid surfaces as they passed along, abrading the north-west faces of many hills, but leaving the slopes in the opposite direction uninjured.' 'In the present state of our knowledge, all that can be legitimately inferred from the diluvium is, that many portions of the northern nations of Europe and America were then under the sea, and that a strong current set over them.' He then speaks of large caverns, which

appear to

have been shut up by the diluvial current, and in which the remains of many birds and animals, such as now exist, have been found' (p. 142).

Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks and boulders, which, in many parts of the earth, are thickly strewn over the surface. Some of these blocks are many tons in weight, yet are clearly ascertained to have belonged originally to situations at a great distance. Fragments of the granite of Shap Fell are found in every direction around, to the distance of fifty miles, one piece being placed high on Griffel mountain, on the opposite side of the Solway estuary. Fragments of the Alps are found far up the slopes of Jura. There are even blocks on the east coast of England, supposed to have travelled from Norway.' Whether they were transported thither by floating icebergs, which the mighty flood had cast adrift, or that their specific gravity, being little more than the bottom of the mountain wave that rolled over them, they were hurried from distant regions like pebbles in a rushing brook, it is not necessary to inquire; but after such facts as have been copied from the pages of an infidel book, who shall longer doubt the possibility of such a flood as that of Noah, or can hesitate to believe that such has

actually taken place? It has been said truly that an undevout astronomer is mad,' and what else can we say of him, who could compile such a mass of evidence to prove a fact which has stood revealed on the sacred page for the last three thousand years, without being convinced by it? It is strange yet true, that God has often converted the works of both ancient and modern unbelievers, such as Porphyry, Gibbon, Volney, and a host of others, into standing pillars for supporting the truth of his Word; and now the history of the Vestiges may well be added to the list; for this work will become a standard book of reference, to prove that the discoveries of geology confirm in the strongest manner the declarations of Scripture, which have stood recorded during thousands of years.

W. C.

51

LETTER VII.

HEAT OF THE INTERNAL PART OF THE EARTH.

SIR,-Geology clearly proves that our globe has at different periods been exposed to tremendous convulsions. In the history of the Vestiges of Creation, very frequent reference is made to the violent tossings of the mountains. In p. 44: Sometimes elevated in naked mountain masses, sometimes found only at great depths below other rocks of a different kind, granite appears as the basis rock of the earth's crust; the form into which the once fluid matter of our planet was primarily resolved, although, in many instances, subjected, under heat, to new movements at times long subsequent.' In p. 46: 'It is also to be remarked of all these early rocks, that they have evidently been subjected to an extraordinary degree of heat; insomuch that they have generally acquired a new crystalline texture, are strangely waved and contorted,' &c. Of the stratified rocks it is said: Generally they are tilted up in high inclinations, with the broken edges directed

towards granitic mountains; indicating that the rise of these mountains from below was the cause of the change of position in the stratified rocks.' These new rocks are again, in their turn, broken up and placed in high inclinations by new and similar upbursts of igneous rock' (p. 85). 'Coal beds generally lie in basins, as if following the curve of the bottom of seas. There is no such basin which is not broken up into pieces; some of which have been tossed on edge, others allowed to sink, causing the ends of the strata to be in some instances many yards, and, in a few, several hundred feet, removed from the corresponding ends of neighbouring fragments. These are held to be the results of volcanic movements below, the operation of which is further seen in numerous upbursts and intrusions of fireborn rock' (p. 135). 'One remarkable circumstance connected with the tertiary formation remains to be noticed the prevalence of volcanic action at that era.' He gives proofs of this in Italy and in England. The Pyrenees, too, and Alps have both undergone elevation since the deposition of the tertiaries; and in Sicily there are mountains which have risen 3000 feet since the depositions of some of the most recent of these rocks.' In his explana