he light of geology, however, the notion is sufficiently
absurd. A mile and a half deep, the earth's interior is hot enough to
convert water into steam; there is, therefore, no chance for water to
exist in its centre, or anywhere near it.

_It is as great a difficulty to discover where the water went when the
flood was over._ We are told that the fountains of the deep and the
windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain was restrained. But this
could do nothing towards diminishing the water. All that it could
possibly accomplish would be to prevent the rise of the water. But we
are also told that "God made a wind to pass over the earth." All that
the wind could do, however, would be to convey to the atmosphere the
moisture it took up in vapor; and this could not have lowered the water
a yard. The highest mountain, Kunchinginga, is more than twenty-eight
thousand feet high; the flood prevailed one hundred and fifty days, and
abated two hundred and twenty-five; and if this abatement was done by
the wind, it must have blown an ocean of water from the entire surface
of the earth, one hundred and twenty-five deep, every day for eight
months! All the hurricanes that ever blew, blowing at once, would be the
gentlest zephyr of a summer's eve, compared with such a wind as that;
and by what possibility could such a craft as the ark survive the storm?

A question, proper to be asked is, _How were the animals supplied with
light?_ and how did the attendants see to wait upon them in the first
and second stories of the ark? There was but one window, and that only
twenty-two inches in size, and it appears to have been in the third
story. It was a day when kerosene was unknown, and tallow dips were
uninvented. How did these animals live in the darkness? and, above all,
how did Noah and his family supply their wants? It could have been no
easy or pleasant thing to wait upon hungry lions, tigers, crocodiles,
and rattlesnakes in the dark, to say nothing of the danger.

_How did they breathe?_ There was but one twenty-two inch window; the
ark was "pitched within and without with pitch;" "The Lord shut him in."
Talk of the Black Hole of Calcutta: it must have been pure as the breath
of morning compared with the condition of the ark in one day.

_Where did they obtain water for drink?_ Supposing all the additional
water needed to drown the world was fresh, when mingled with the water
of the sea, as much as one-tenth of it would be salt wat