covered in the earth, cannot be attributed to species known at present to exist; and that the immense extent of the beds of shells amalgamated into limestone, or aggregated without being consolidated, cannot be explained except on the supposition that they are derived from the ruins of an anterior globe. As to unknown species of marine animals, what know we of the profundities of the ocean? What know we of the species inhabiting at this moment those inscrutable depths, many miles, it may be, in perpendicular descent below the level which the longest sounding line has reached? Are we to pronounce concerning those depths and their inhabitants as though the flooring of the sea were spread before our eyes like the surface of Salisbury plain; or like the bottom of a pond which by drawing a bolt we had laid dry? As to the immensity of the quantity of shells discovered, it is undeniable that on the most contracted computation of chronology, for we ask not for the high antiquity of the present earth which infidelity assigns, sixteen centuries and a half elapsed between the creation and the deluge. Surely it is not too much to say, when the proverbially rapid multiplication of fish

es is borne in mind*, that the period of sixteen centuries was sufficient for the production of masses so enormous of shells and organic re

As shell-fish inhabit the bottom of the sea, and are not migratory, it is not easy to adduce specific evidence, comprehending a variety of examples, respecting the ratio of their increase. Dr. Baster counted twelve thousand four hundred and forty-four eggs under the tail of a løbster, besides those that remained in its body unprotruded. Pennant's British Zoology, vol. iv. p. 11. Pennant also states, (ib. p. 9.) when speaking of the "vast quantities" of lobsters brought to the London market from the Orkney Isles and the eastern coast of Scotland, that "sixty or seventy thousand are annually brought, in well-boats, from the neighbourhood of Montrose alone." This was the number imported in the year 1772. It may have been greatly augmented since that time.

It is not unreasonable to suppose an analogy between shell-fish and other kinds of fishes, as to prolific powers. Leuwenhoek counted nine millions three hundred and eighty-four thousand eggs in a cod-fish of a middling size. Pennant's British Zoology, iii. 177. The immeasurable increase of the herring may be inferred from Pennant's description (ib. p. 336.) of the great shoal which annually appears off the Shetland islands in June. During the two preceding months, the advanced guard, as it may be termed, of the immense army precedes; and is marked

mains, as should be adequate, whether quietly upheaved in unbroken strata by the expansion of submarine fires, or ground through collision into fragments by the fury of the waters, to account for all the actual phenomena. The formation, growing almost under the eyes of the beholder, of immense reefs and considerable islands of coralline materials in tropical climates by the labours of minute marine animals of various kinds, illustrates the incalculable multiplication of shellfish. And if extensive tracts at the bottom of the ocean became covered antecedently to the

by the flocks of gannets and other birds which prey upon it. "But when the main body approaches, its breadth and its depth are such as to alter the appearance of the very ocean. It is divided into distinct columns of five or six miles in length, and three or four in breadth." A similar conclusion as to the multiplication of pilchards is authorised by the enormous quantities which annually visit the coast of Cornwall. "The numbers that are

taken at one shooting out of the nets is amazingly great. Dr. Borlase assured me that, on the 5th of October, 1767, there were at one time inclosed in St. Ives's Bay seven thousand hogsheads, each hogshead containing thirty-five thousand fish," in all, two hundred and forty-five millions. Ib. p. 345.

deluge with shells and testaceous remains, who can reasonably affirm that by successive impulses of the waters in the hundred and fifty days during which the flood prevailed upon the earth, vast portions of these beds might not be piled one upon another; or that dense layers of mud, or of sand, or of stones, might not be poured upon them from other parts of the ocean; or that the new strata of earthy substances might not speedily be overspread with fresh masses of shells irresistibly driven by some new submarine commotion; or that these alternate strata might not then be uplifted and fractured by earthquakes and volcanic explosions, and left in horizontal or inclined or vertical directions, with every diversity of shape, and of mixture, and of confusion, which investigation has hitherto detected? But it is likewise urged by the objector, that reliques also of terrestrial animals belonging to a prior world have been discovered. Why belonging to a prior world? Because the original species are not at present known. If the skeletons then of the mammoth, or of the megatherion*, or the

* Shaw's Zoology, vol. i. p. 162.

horns of some unknown tribe of the class of the deer or the buffalo, have been found on the surface of the earth, or dug up from bogs and cavities; may not those animals still survive in the central solitudes of America, or in the depths of Northern Asia? Or may not they have been extinguished at the deluge; or subsequently exterminated by a roving population of hunters? Is not any one of these suppositions at least as philosophical, as to erect on a basis so narrow and slender as that in question, the hypothesis of an anterior world? If, fifty years ago, the bones of a kangaroo had been extracted from a mine or a morass; they probably might have been produced by some philosopher as triumphant proofs that our globe was constructed from the wreck of a predecessor.

A difficulty has also been raised on another ground. It is alleged that a longer period of time than is consistent with the Mosaic records would be requisite for the induration of rocks and stony strata from that state of softness, in which it is plain, from the unfractured condition of many tender shells imbedded in them, that these masses were piled together, if produced by the deluge.