NOAH'S FLOOD.
WHATEVER may be the ultimate verdict on the question, it seems to us impossible to deny that Et present the evidence in favour of a deluge, such as that described in Genesis, is accumulating. A great impression was made some twenty years ago, when Mr. George Smith deciphered and published the account of the deluge from the tablets of Assur-banipal, dating from the seventh century B.C. It may be doubted whether those tablets were as im- portant as they seemed to some persona for the object for which they have been often cited ; for whilst they show the general and widespread character of the story of the Flood, they seem to throw no light on the question whether that story were historical or fabulous. The fables of Pilpay are not historically true, though they have spread over the world and been reproduced from generation to generation ; and it is common knowledge that a good story is as likely to run as far afield and to be as often repeated as a piece of sober history.
The earlier geologists, whilst they maintained that no fossil remains of man were anywhere in existence, nevertheless found, as they thought, abundant evidence of a universal deluge,—the title of Professor Buckland's well-known book, " Reliquira Diluvianse," bearing testimony to the conclusion at which he had arrived, especially from his patient investiga- tion of English caverns. On bath thca points their sue cessors have been inclined to find them in error ; for fossil remains of man have undoubtedly been found, and the more accurate observations on the dates or order of succession of various water-washed sands and gravels have tended to show that many beds of diluvium which had been supposed to be con-
temporaneous, were, in fact, successive, and that the theory of a single flood would not account for them. The so-called doctrine of uniformity in geology leaned in the same direction, and everything of which it could be said, that it was out of the ordinary daily course of Nature, was looked on with suspicion and distrust, and to believe in it was almost in itself a mark of heresy. Yet in point of fact the history of our own world in our own time is full of cataclysms. The sub- sidence which formed the Zuyder Sea, the lifting at a bound of some 100,000 square miles of Chili to a considerable height, the eruption of Krakatoa, would all have been dis- believed by our uniformitarians if they had occurred in past ages.
But now, again, there are some signs that the current of opinion may be changing,—for the history of opinion, like the history of the earth, is one of incessant change. Sir Henry Howorth, in his elaborate work on the Mammoth and the Flood, has marshalled a long array of arguments in favour of the belief in a widespread deluge ; and it may be doubted whether his argument has received as much atten- tion as it deserved, and as perhaps it would have received had the evidence been placed before the world in a somewhat less ponderous fashion. One of his most interesting arguments is drawn from the history of man on the face of the globe. Every one now knows that archaeologists deal with ancient men of two distinct classes,— the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic man. Both used flint implements, but imple- ments so different that there is no difficulty in separating the one kind from the other ; the one set of men were abso- lute savages, though (tell it not in sthetic circles) they were more of artists than their more civilised successors. The others were farmers and herdsmen; and between the arts of the two races there is absolutely no connection what- ever. The Neolithic flint instruments were followed by those of bronze and iron, and the Neolithic man and the Neolithic civilisation merged into the man and the civilisation of our earliest historical records. But not so with the Pahnolithic man ; he and all his works passed suddenly into nothingness, for all evidence tends to show the entire disappearance of the whole race of Palmolithic man before the appearance of his successor on the stage of the world. The Palwolithic race disappear absolutely and suddenly, in a condition of utter savagery. Neolithic man appears in Europe as an agricul- turalist, and not without a considerable civilisation. What was it that swept away the whole early race, and left a tabula rasa for the new race to enter upon ?
And this sudden disappearance which is true of man is true of the lower animals which were his contemroraries. With the elder man there lived the hyena and the lion, the rhinoceros and the mammoth ; and they have all disappeared from Europe. With the Neolithic man are found a group of animals which may substantially be recognised as the common indigenous European animals of to-day.
Then with regard to the mammoth itself, and the other great creatures which have been found in company with it, especially in Siberia, Sir Henry Howorth argues with con- siderable force that the mode in which the bodies and the bones are found is not consistent with the gradual processes of decay and & ath, but only with some widespread catas- trophe which caused a hecatomb on a vast scale. The evidence is detailed, and would occupy us too long if we were to attempt to summarise it ; but one or two instances may be permitted to show of what kind it consists. In one case an elephant was so rolled up, that its tusks were between its hind-legs ; in another case, the opened nostrils and partly opened mouth of a rhinoceros suggested to the beholders that the animal had died of suffocation ; and in another body of the same species, the coagulated blood found in the vessels and even in the fine capillaries, seemed to show that it too had died of asphyxia.
And now, from a different point of view, and with reference to a somewhat different area, the subject has been approached by the veteran geologist, Professor Prestwich; and in his elaborate paper read before the Royal Society, and more recently and briefly in his essay "On certain phenomena belonging to the close of the last geological neriod. and on their bearing on the tradition of the Flood," he has thrown the great weight of his authority into the affirmative scale. He concedes that the larger part of the superficial deposits of loam, gravel, and sand, has resulted from the long-continued action of known agencies, and is not to be attributed to any sudden transient catastrophe ; but in his opinion there is a residual drift which cannot be so accounted for, and which he attributes to a great flood. This deposit, which he calls the "Rubble Drift," consists of debris, for the most part angular and sharp,—not carried far from its place of origin, and not glaciated. It is the same bed which other geologists have attributed, though for what reason we could never clearly see, to the snow and cold of the glacial period. In many places this drift was, according to Mr. Prestwich's view, carried by the retreating waters, as the land rose, over the old cliffs which occupied nearly the position of the present sea-line, and is now found containing not only the remains of the animals which the water had over- taken, but the delicate land-shells of the land-surface before its submergence, and in some cases flint implements of Pala3o- Ethic man. The case of the Channel Islands is, according to his view, of especial interest, for the position of this drift borne over the cliffs shows that the sweep of the debris was from the centre of each island outwards, "or such as would result from the flow off of a body of water during the emergence of the island."
Another phenomenon, closely connected with that of the Rubble Drift, is the existence of raised beaches in many places elo.ely in the line of the existing sea-shore. The general configuration of the land before and after the flood is con- ceived to have been nearly the same; but the action of the elevating force was greater than that of the depressing force, and accordingly left the old beaches raised above the new sea- line, where, of course, a new beach has been formed. Taken by itself, the existence of these beaches might be explained by elevation alone, but as they are often more or less buried tinder Rubble Drift, nothing short of subsidence, submergence, and elevation seems adequate to account for the facts.
Another phenomenon which Professor Prestwich seeks to connect with the same great event is the occurrence, (specially in the limestone rock, of fissures or rents which have been filled up to the level of the ground with angular fragments of the adjacent rocks, containing bones, rarely perfect, often very much broken,—not in skeletons, but in a way which shows that though the bones have been widely dispersed, they have not been worn or gnawed by carnivore. The explanation suggested is that as the upheaving force operated, and the rocks yielded unequally to its pressure, these rents would occur, and that as the waters retreated over the rising land, they operated as traps into which portions of the detritus, with the remains of the dead animals, were carried by the swirl of the receding waters. The facts, as stated, are justly considered to be inconsistent with the theory that the animals had fallen into the fissures and then perished, —for in that case we should have all the bones of the carcase; or that they were carried thither as prey,—for in that case they would have been gnawed. Again, there is found in France and Central Europe (to say nothing of other parts of the world) a deposit only slightly developed in England, and known as Loess. That this superficial deposit, where it is found in the valley of a great river, such as the Rhine, the Danube, and the Rhone, is the daughter of the river, is not contested by Mr. Prestwich; but it is found, he says, on the dividing watersheds and the high plains separating the river basins, at altitudes from 400 ft. to 1,500 ft. With this, as the Rubble Drift of England, Mr. Prestwich would credit the great flood.
There are other facts to which Mr. Prestwich does not refer in his little essay which impress the imagination with the notion that since our island has attained its present form it has been subjected to a vast, if sudden, change of level. Many years ago, Mr. Prestwich himself found near Maccles- field, at an elevation of from 1,100 ft. to 1,200 ft. above sea- level, remains of marine shells of the kind now found in our British or the more northern seas ; and at the higher level of 1 300 ft., just below the summit of Moel Tryfa.n, a hill of the Snowdon group, a deposit has been found containing very numerous shells of the same description. Did Snowdon and his sister-hills bow themselves beneath the sea ; or did the flood rise nearly to their summit, bringing with it the sea- shells from the neighbouring shore ?
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