posing
the animals to subsist as long.

_Whence came the water that covered the earth to the tops of the highest
mountains?_ "All the high hills that were under the whole heaven were
covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains
were covered," says the record. And to do this, it rained for forty days
and forty nights. A fall of an inch of water in a day is considered a
very heavy rain in Great Britain. The heaviest single rain recorded fell
on the Khasia Hills in India, and amounted to thirty inches in
twenty-four hours. If this deluging rain could have continued for forty
days and nights, and had it fallen over the entire surface of the globe,
the amount would only have been one hundred feet; which, instead of
covering the mountains, would not have covered the hills. But, of
course, such a rain is only possible for a very limited time, and on a
small portion of the earth's surface.

Sir John Leslie, in "The Encyclopedia Britannica," says, "Supposing the
vast canopy of air, by some sudden change of internal constitution, at
once to discharge its whole watery store, this precipitate would form a
sheet of scarcely five inches thick over the surface of the globe." But
if the water that covered the earth above the tops of the highest
mountains came by rain, it must have rained seven hundred feet a day for
forty days! or there must have fallen each day, according to Sir John
Leslie's estimate, more than fourteen hundred times as much water on the
earth as the atmosphere contained!

But the writer says, "The fountains of the great deep were broken up."
To the Jews, who supposed, with David, that God had founded the earth
upon the seas, and established it upon the floods, this meant something;
but, in the light of geology, we see that it only demonstrates the
ignorance of the man who wrote and the people that believed the story.

Adam Clarke, commenting on this passage, says, "It appears that an
immense quantity of water occupied the centre of the antediluvian earth;
and, as this burst forth by the order of God, the circumambient strata
must sink in order to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the elevated
waters." If true, it would not have assisted in drowning the world one
spoonful. For if the strata sank anywhere to fill the hollow previously
occupied by the water, it would only make the mountains so much higher
in comparison: hence it would require just that much extra water to
cover them. In t