o be falling on the American one; and on the latter such was the actual
impression entertained by the people. It is stated by Sir Charles Lyell,
in his "Elements," that he was informed by Mr. Cruickshanks, an English
botanist who resided in Chili at the time, "that it was the general
belief of the fishermen and inhabitants, _not_ that the land had risen,
but that the ocean had permanently retreated." But if it had retreated
from the Chilian shore, how could it have risen on the Indian one? In
like manner the sea appears to be receding from the north-eastern shores
of Sweden at the rate of nearly four vertical feet in the century; while
it seems to be advancing on the western coasts of Greenland at
apparently a rate more considerable, though there the ratio of its rise
has not been marked with equal care. It seems to be rising on even the
Swedish province of Scania; while all the time, however, the actual
motion,--upwards in one region, downwards in another,--is in the solid
earth,--not in the unstable water, which merely serves as a sort of
hydrostatic _level_, to indicate this fact of subsidence or elevation in
the land. And of course all the reasoning, founded on mere appearances,
that would reverse the process by assigning permanency to the level of
the land, and fluctuation to that of the sea, would lead to inevitable
error.

Let us, for the illustration's sake, suppose that the British islands
had been the scene of the Deluge; and that it had been occasioned by a
gradual depression in the earth's surface of about fifteen hundred miles
in length, a thousand miles in breadth, five thousand feet in depth in
its centre, and which gradually trended all around towards the sides.
Such a depression would form a scarce appreciable inequality on the
surface of even a three feet globe; in a twelve inch globe it might be
represented by the abrasion of a small patch of the varnish; nor would
it have in nature one sixth the depth, or one sixteenth the area, of the
bed of the Atlantic Ocean. Let us suppose further, that it had been
produced by an equable sinking of the surface, prolonged for forty days
at the rate of one hundred and twenty-five feet per day,--a motion not
equal to that of the minute-hand of a clock whose dial plate measures
two feet in diameter. Further, let us suppose that a thoroughly
intelligent man,--let us say Dr. Kitto himself,--secure from all
personal danger in an ark perched on some such commanding eminen