at to weaken the tradition of a Deluge, he had denied all
petrified shells, and only admitted them as _lusus naturae_, he entirely
lost my confidence; for my own eyes had on the Baschberg plainly enough
shown me that I stood on the bottom of an old dried-up sea, among the
_exuviae_ of its ancient inhabitants. These mountains had certainly been
once covered with waves,--whether before or during the Deluge did not
concern me: it was enough that the valley of the Rhine had been a
monstrous lake,--a bay extending beyond the reach of eyesight: out of
this I was _not_ to be talked. I thought much more of advancing in the
knowledge of lands and mountains, let what would be the result." I know
not in the whole history of opinion a more instructive passage than
this. Little could Voltaire have known what he was in reality doing, or
how egregiously he was overreaching himself, when, in laboring to bear
down the evidence borne by fossils to the ancient upheavals and
cataclysms, he suffered himself to make use of assertions and arguments
so palpably unfair. And those who employ, in their zeal against the
geologists, what is still exceedingly common,--the Voltairean style of
argument,--especially if they employ it in what they deem the behalf of
religion, might do well to inquire whether they are not in some little
danger of producing the Voltairean result.

No man acquainted with the general outlines of Palaeontology, or the true
succession of the sedimentary formations, has been able to believe,
during the last half century, that any proof of a general deluge can be
derived from the _older_ geologic systems,--Palaeozoic, Secondary, or
Tertiary. It has been held, however, by accomplished geologists, within
even the last thirty years, that such proof might be successfully sought
for in what are known as the superficial deposits. Such was the belief
of Cuvier,--a man who, even in geologic science, which was certainly not
his peculiar province, exerted a mighty influence over the thinking of
other men. "I agree with MM. Deluc and Dolomieu in thinking," we find
him saying, in his widely famed "Theory of the Earth," "that if anything
in geology be established, it is, that the surface of our globe has
undergone a great and sudden revolution, the date of which cannot be
referred to a much earlier period than five or six thousand years ago."
But from the same celebrated work we learn that Cuvier held that this
sudden catastrophe,--occasione