NOTE AND ILLUSTRATION

ΤΟ

LETTER VI.

(a) Page 469.

MR. PALLAS, who had formerly espoused the opinion of Mr. de Buf

fon, that Siberia was once the abode of elephants, is now convinced by his later obfervations that fuch, whofe remains are there found in confiderable numbers, must have either fled to thofe high grounds to avoid an increafing deluge, or that their carcafes had been wafted thither by its waters. In his obfervations on the formation of mountains this author says, that the relics of those large animals inhabitants of Indoftan, the elephant, rhinoceros, and monftrous buffaloes, are to be found in great quantities near the course of rivers, and chiefly wherever there is any confiderable opening in the chain of the Oural mountains, which bound Siberia to the fouth. They are depofited at no great depth under beds of fand or flime, accompanied with various fea-fhells, bones of fish, and wood covered with ochre: an evident proof of their having been tranfported thither by water. A rhinoceros, ftill covered with its fkin entire, found in the frozen foil of the borders of the Viloûi, is a convincing proof, fays he, that it must have been the most rapid inundation which could have hurried this carcafe to those frozen countries before corruption had time to deftroy its tenderest parts. He adds that, according to the report of hunters, elephants and

I

other

other monftrous animals are found as yet covered with their skins at the foot of the mountains which occupy the space between the rivers Indighirka and Kolyma. We may here with Mr. de Luc observe, that the perfect state of preservation in which are found the bones of fuch animals, so far fouth as the Oural mountains, is alfo a proof that the inundation which carried them thither cannot be of older date than that which may be reafonably afcribed to the mofaical deluge. Dr. Hutton remarks, that if the shells accompanying these relics are petrified, as he has fince heard they are, it is a proof that they fimply proceed from the decompofition of folid ftrata, in which they had been enclosed, formed under the fea and travelled in the running waters of the earth. But he will not thus fubvert this strong evidence of a deluge, till he can bring naturalifts to believe with him that no petrification can take place but under the fea.

THOUGHTS

THOUGHTS

ON THE

STRUCTURE

OF THIS GLOBE,

LETTER VII.

Further Attempt to explain the Mofaical Account of the first Formation of the Univerfe by the fucceffive Application of the Fundamental Laws of Nature.

BUT it is my own ideas on this philofophical part of our researches that you require, Sir, and hitherto I have entertained you with the opinions of others. The writings of authors of fo much fuperior authority and of fuch merited reputation, which I have laid before you, should perhaps condemn me to filence; but I have promifed you my own particular thoughts on the fubject, and I will now endeavour to collect in order to fubmit them to your judgment. When I first took pen in hand in obedience to your request, the 3 P works

works of Meffieurs Wallerius and de Luc had not yet fallen into my hands. I have now given a previous abftract of their fyftems, and particularly of the first gentleman's, both that you may be inclined to give fome little more credit to my ideas as fupported in great measure by the fentiments of philofophers of fuch weight, and because their writings have greatly affifted me in developing my own thoughts. Neither will I conceal from you that, wherever I have found their explications confonant to, or ameliorating, my plan, I With the fame franknefs I

have adopted them without fcruple. shall endeavour to refute their opinions wherever they happen not to coincide with mine. In a career where it behoves to tread with caution and diffidence, always ready to liften with candour, and to adopt truth wherever I may find it, my motto will fill be, "Nullius jurare in verba magistri."

Little fatisfied with the feveral fyftems. I had read before our journey into Switzerland, I naturally turned my thoughts to a more serious consideration of an antient author, often noticed by these, though viewed in various lights and with various fentiments. To him I reverted with fo much the greater earneftnefs, as I already perceived his hiftory of mankind immediately preceding and fubfequent to a deluge wonderfully confirmed by the teftimonies of all antient traditions in all parts of the world. All of these agree with him, that ten generations of men, of a longevity no longer known to us, preceded a general deluge, in which, excepting a very small number who alone re-peopled the earth, all that former

race of men perished in punishment of their depravity. All the most antient inhabitants of the prefent earth profefs to derive their origin and pedigree from fome one of thofe men, whom he has noted as the fathers of nations, and of almoft every one of them fome veftige is fomewhere or other to be found on record. As a further proof that fome fuch general and not very remote cataftrophe had happened to mankind, all history concurs in fhewing, not fifteen centuries before the chriftian æra, as yet feeble colonies emigrating to, and gradually peopling countries the most fertile, and in the process of a very few ages the most populous and the most renowned. These facts, if true, difconcert indeed not a little the ground-work of most modern systems. But this fingular combination of traditions derived from the highest antiquity giving, if not proof, at least a greater degree of authority to these points than can be affumed by mere negatives grounded purely on their incompatibility with hypothetical fyftems, it seemed equitable to examine without prejudice, whether nature herself was really, as these philofophers pretend, in direct oppofition with these or other articles of his narration, or whether all of them might not be explained without the violation of her known laws.

Many modern philofophers, whofe fyftems might be shaken amongst christians by the authority of Mofes, content themselves with answering to the objections which may be made to them from thence, that the Jewish legislator, though versed himself in all the Egyptian 3 P 2 fciences,