d, as he supposed, by an elevation of the
sea bottom and a submergence of the previously existing land,--had _not_
been universal; seeing he could entertain the belief that the three
great races of the human family,--Ethiopian, Mongolian, and
Caucasian,--had all escaped from it in several directions. In referring
to the marked peculiarities of the Mongolian race, so very distinct from
the Caucasian, he merely intimates, that he was "tempted to believe
their ancestors and ours had escaped the great catastrophe on different
sides;" but in dwelling on the still more marked peculiarities of the
Negroes, we find him explicitly stating, that, "all their characters
clearly show that they had escaped from the overwhelming deluge at
another point than the Caucasian and Altaic races; from which they had
perhaps been separated," he adds, "for a long time previous to the
occurrence of that event." For a season, geologists of high standing in
our own country, such as Buckland and Conybeare, followed Cuvier so far
as to hold, that the superficial deposits bore evidence everywhere of a
great cataclysm, the last of the geologic catastrophes; and which might
be identified, they believed, with the Noachian Deluge. Against this
view one of the most distinguished of Scottish naturalists, Dr. John
Fleming, raised a vigorous protest as early as the year 1826, and
conclusively showed that no temporary flood could have produced the
existing appearances. And so thoroughly were his facts and reasonings
confirmed by subsequent discovery, that the geologists of name who had
acquiesced, wholly or in part, in the Cuvierian view, read in succession
their recantations: Dr. Buckland in especial, who had written most
largely on the subject, and committed himself most thoroughly, did so a
very few years after: nor does the hypothesis of Cuvier appear to have
been since adopted by any writer of scientific reputation. Instead,
therefore, of contending with arguments or inferences which there are
now no parties in the field to maintain, I shall briefly refer to a few
of the leading characteristics of those superficial deposits on which
the abandoned conclusions were originally based, and show, in the
passing, that they are not such as a temporary deluge could have
produced.

The superficial deposits include what is known as the mammaliferous
crag, the drift, the boulder and brick clays, the stratified sands and
gravels, the travelled rocks, the oesars, and