_The Unknown_.--I have made use of the term "diluvian," because it has
been adopted by geologists, but without meaning to identify the cause of
the formations with the deluge described in the sacred writings. I apply
the term merely to signify loose and water-worn strata not at all
consolidated, and deposited by an inundation of water, and in these
countries which they have covered man certainly did not exist. With
respect to your argument derived from New Holland, it appears to me to be
without weight. In a variety of climates, and in very distant parts of
the globe, secondary strata of the same order are found, and they contain
always the same kind of organic remains, which are entirely different
from any of those now afforded by beings belonging to the existing order
of things. The catastrophes which produced the secondary strata and
diluvian depositions could not have been local and partial phenomena, but
must have extended over the whole, or a great part of the surface, of the
globe. The remains of similar shell-fishes are found in the limestones
of the old and new continents; the teeth of the mammoth are not uncommon
in various parts of Europe; entire skeletons have been found in America,
and even the skin covered with hair and the entire body of one of these
enormous extinct animals has been discovered in Siberia preserved in a
mass of ice. In the oldest secondary strata there are no remains of such
animals as now belong to the surface; and in the rocks which may be
regarded as more recently deposited, these remains occur but rarely, and
with abundance of extinct species. There seems, as it were, a gradual
approach to the present system of things, and a succession of
destructions and creations preparatory to the existence of man. It will
be useless to push these arguments farther. You must allow that it is
impossible to defend the proposition, that the present order of things is
the ancient and constant order of Nature, only modified by existing laws,
and, consequently, the view which you have supported must be abandoned.
The monuments of extinct generations of animals are as perfect as those