floods
far more powerful than any we now are in the habit of seeing. Every
where, except in the case of rocky cliffs, and steep mountains, or where
we see obvious evidence of a recent elevation, we find the surface
strewn with the deposits of water: boulders of greater or less size,
beds of gravel, sand, and clay, form the present outer coating of the
greatest part of the land. These deposits were long confounded with the
alluvial, but have at length been proved, by incontrovertible evidence,
to be the results of an action, which if not contemporaneous, must have
been universal. We have seen an able attempt to show that this species
of deposit did not take place at one and the same period, but was merely
the general consequence of similar causes acting at different epochs.
Our impression, we must however confess to be, that the action was not
only co-extensive with the globe, but contemporaneous. It at any rate
exhibits proofs the most satisfactory, that the last great and
extensive change which our earth has undergone, was effected by the
agency of water, in a state of rapid and violent motion. Ascribing this
deposit to a single flood, it has been styled diluvial.

There are cases where alluvial deposits rest upon the diluvium, and from
the depth of these it has been attempted to calculate the time that has
elapsed since the former of these actions was resumed. The diluvium has
also been found in caverns lying upon an ancient stalagmite, and covered
again with a new formation of that modification of carbonate of lime.
The thickness of the latter deposit has also been made the basis of a
calculation, and although neither of these methods is to be considered
as approaching to an accuracy more perfect than some hundreds of years,
the two methods confirm each other in the general result, which is,
that, at a date not more remote than fifty or sixty centuries, there
must have taken place a total submersion of all the land, except,
perhaps, the tops of high mountains, did they then exist. We have in the
sacred volume, a record of such a catastrophe, the flood of Noah, and
from that time to the present, no convulsion, equally extensive in its
influence, has devastated the globe. Have not then the geologists who
have seen in these indications the convincing evidence of that
occurrence, been warranted in their inference, of the identity of an
event pointed out by undeniable physical evidence, with one recorded in
a history to