wanting, and that they are equally absent from
the equator up to the thirty-fifth degree of south
latitude; but that there they begin to reappear,
and that their number goes on increasing in
proportion as he draws near to the South Pole.
Thus the southern hemisphere, like the northern,
has also its diluvium.

The diluvium, therefore, is a phenomenon
which is common to the earth's two poles.
This, which might prove a perplexing circumstance
for other geological theories, is a triumph
for M. Adhémar's. His theory informs us that ten
thousand five hundred years before Noah's deluge,
there must have been a previous deluge produced
by the disruption of the antarctic glacier. The
diluvium of the south, then, is the witness of the
last-but-one general cataclysm; it occurred when
the mass of the seas (which were then, as now,
in the southern hemisphere) and the ruins of the
glacier were rapidly borne towards the north;
and the erratic blocks (whose train extends from
Cape Horn to the forty-first degree, where they
were arrested by the mountains of Brazil and
Bolivia) date, like the clay of the Pampas, from
fourteen thousand seven hundred years ago.

From this same cataclysm dates another
phenomenon, one of the most remarkable in the
history of the world. Every one has heard of
the extraordinary object found in the last century
on the banks of the Lena. The ice in melting
exposed the body of an elephant in such perfect
preservation, that dogs ate its flesh. Buffon
mentions six elephants preserved in the ice near
the Ohio, in America. Sarytschew discovered
another on the banks of the Alaseia, a river
which empties itself into the lcy Sea. In short,
there is scarcely a canton in Siberia which does
not contain the bones of elephants; the islands
in the Icy Sea furnish enormous quantities.
How is the presence of these great pachyderms
in such a rigorous latitude to be explained?
Cuvier supposes a sudden cooling of the
countries which they inhabited; an arbitrary
supposition, which throws no light upon the subject.
Adhémar's theory shows the elephants fleeing
before the last deluge but one, as far as the
sixtieth parallel, which then formed the limit of
the northern glacier, and there, falling exhausted
by hunger, fatigue, and cold, they were soon
covered by masses of snow, afterwards
transformed to masses of ice, which have preserved
them to the present day.

Thus, under Adhémar's guidance (to which we
yield ourselves, for the understanding of his
journey), we start from a grand law of the system
of the world, the precession of the equinoxes, and
we arrive at the conclusion that grand deluges are
periodical, and alternately occur from south to
north and from north to south: and we find,
on inspection, that the earth has actually been
ravaged by a succession of general cataclysms
separated from each other by long intervals of
time; and that, of the two last deluges, one, the
most ancient, came from the South Pole; and that
the other, the most recent, was let loose from the
North Pole. Not only has the sea its minor
regular oscillations every six hours, alternately
flooding and leaving bare, narrow, but far-spreading
strips of shore, gradually undermining islands
and continents, and producing important changes
on the surface of our planet, but the ocean has
also its grand secular tides, which have
punctually recurred every ten thousand five hundred
years, when it is high water over one whole
hemisphere and low water throughout another,
accompanied by such awful devastation by sea
and land, such terrific convulsions in the sky
overhead—for the equilibrium of the atmosphere
would be displaced at the same time with that
of the seas, both would rush wildly in one
direction, accelerating each other's velocity and
force—that if human eye could witness that
dread day, no human tongue could adequately
describe it.

Adhémar's deluge will happen—if it happen at
all—six thousand three hundred years hence. It
will be produced by the breaking up of the
antarctic glacier coinciding with the increase of
the arctic glacier. The waters will rush down
upon our hemisphere, which will be submerged,
whilst in the other hemisphere unknown continents
will appear. Vegetable and animal life
will in great measure be destroyed; and the
same must happen to the human race,
unless—— A few tribes, families, or individuals,
escaping to the highest table-lands and mountain
ranges, should survive—to fall back almost
immediately into a state of barbarism. This
is what must happen, unless some force be
interposed to counteract the effects of the
precession of the equinoxes, supposing it proved that
one of those effects is to disturb the centre of
gravity of the world by causing an overgrowth
of the glacier at one pole, while the glacier at
the other pole is melted down to fragility and
dissolution. If such be not the case, Adhémar's
deluge is a chimera.

M. Victor Meunier (who has been mainly
instrumental in bringing this bold theory before
the general public, and to whom the present
paper is indebted for its simplification of the
author's calculations) appears to be sincerely
persuaded that the predicted catastrophe will
really come, unless—— The warning which
Noah received through supernatural means, is
now given by science to the whole human race.
But, all our science is of yesterday. Our
industry, which derives all its grandeur from it,
is still nothing but an industry of pigmies. We
do not know, and consequently we do not employ,
more than an imperceptible fraction of the forces
which nature will yield to us as soon as we are
able to clutch them. We are slaves to the
majority of meteoric influences; the central fire
is, for us, what flashes of atmospherical
electricity are for savages, a source of disasters and
a subject of terror. Our deepest mines do not
penetrate the epidermis of the globe. We are
profoundly ignorant respecting terrestrial
magnetism, auroræ boreales, and telluric electricity.

What strength would be acquired by hands
which could wield such powerful levers as those!
And, without going so far as that, what might
not be the influence on climate, of general and