men--Fossil
canoes, ships, and works of art--Chemical changes which metallic
articles have undergone after long submergence--Imbedding of cities
and forests in subaqueous strata by subsidence--Earthquake of Cutch
in 1819--Buried Temples of Cashmere--Berkeley's arguments for the
recent date of the creation of man--Concluding remarks.

I shall now proceed to inquire in what manner the mortal remains of man
and the works of his hands may be permanently preserved in subaqueous
strata. Of the many hundred million human beings which perish in the
course of every century on the land, every vestige is usually destroyed
in the course of a few thousand years; but of the smaller number that
perish in the waters, a certain proportion must be entombed under
circumstances that may enable parts of them to endure throughout entire
geological epochs.

The bodies of men, together with those of the inferior animals, are
occasionally washed down during river inundations into seas and lakes.
(See pp. 726-728.) Belzoni witnessed a flood on the Nile in September,
1818, where, although the river rose only three feet and a half above
its ordinary level, several villages, with some hundreds of men, women,
and children, were swept away.[1079] It was before mentioned that a rise
of six feet of water in the Ganges, in 1763, was attended with a much
greater loss of lives. (See above, p. 278.)

In the year 1771, when the inundations in the north of England appear to
have equalled the floods of Morayshire in 1829, a great number of houses
and their inhabitants were swept away by the rivers Tyne, Can, Wear,
Tees, and Greta; and no less than twenty-one bridges were destroyed in
the courses of these rivers. At the village of Bywell the flood tore the
dead bodies and coffins out of the churchyard, and bore them away,
together with many of the living inhabitants. During the same tempest an
immense number of cattle, horses, and sheep, were also transported to
the sea, while the whole coast was covered with the wreck of ships. Four
centuries before (in 1338), the same district had been visited by a
similar continuance of heavy rains, followed by disastrous floods, and
it is not improbable that these catastrophes may recur periodically,
though at uncertain intervals. As the population increases, and
buildings and bridges are multiplied, we must expect the loss of lives
and property to augment.[1080]

_Fossilization of human bodies in