to hold for forty-four years, and which afforded him both leisure and a competent income. In the latter part of his life he obtained leave to make several tours in Switzerland, France, Holland and Germany. In Germany he passed the six years from 1798 to 1804; and after his return he undertook a geological tour through England. When he was at Göttingen, in the beginning of his German tour, he received the compliment of being appointed honorary professor of philosophy and geology in that university; but he never entered upon the active duties of a professorship. He was also a correspondent of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and a member of several other scientific associations. He died at Windsor on the 7th of November 1817.
His favourite studies were geology and meteorology. The situation of his native country had naturally led him to contemplate the peculiarities of the earth’s structure, and the properties of the atmosphere, as particularly displayed in mountainous countries, and as subservient to the measurement of heights. According to Cuvier, he ranked among the first geologists of his age. His principal geological work, Lettres physiques et morales sur les montagnes el sur l’histoire de la terre et de l’homme, first published in 1778, and in a more complete form in 1779, was dedicated to Queen Charlotte. It dealt with the appearance of mountains and the antiquity of the human race, explained the six days of the Mosaic creation as so many epochs preceding the actual state of the globe, and attributed the deluge to the filling up of cavities supposed to have been left void in the interior of the earth. He published later an important series of volumes on geological travels in the north of Europe (1810), in England (1811), and in France, Switzerland and Germany (1813). These were translated into English.
Deluc’s original experiments relating to meteorology were valuable to the natural philosopher; and he discovered many facts of considerable importance relating to heat and moisture. He noticed the disappearance of heat in the thawing of ice about the same time that J. Black founded on it his ingenious hypothesis of latent heat. He ascertained that water was more dense about 40° F. (4° C.) than at the temperature of freezing, expanding equally on each side of the maximum; and he was the originator of the theory, afterward readvanced by John Dalton, that the quantity of aqueous vapour contained in any space is independent of the presence or density of the air, or of any other elastic fluid.
His Recherches sur les modifications de l’atmosphère (2 vols. 4to, Geneva, 1772; 2nd ed., 4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1784) contains many accurate and ingenious experiments upon moisture, evaporation and the indications of hygrometers and thermometers, applied to the barometer employed in determining heights. In the Phil. Trans., 1773, appeared his account of a new hygrometer, which resembled a mercurial thermometer, with an ivory bulb, which expanded by moisture, and caused the mercury to descend. The first correct rules ever published for measuring heights by the barometer were those he gave in the Phil. Trans., 1771, p. 158. His Lettres sur l’histoire physique de la terre (8vo, Paris, 1798), addressed to Professor Blumenbach, contains an essay on the existence of a General Principle of Morality. It also gives an interesting account of some conversations of the author with Voltaire and Rousseau. Deluc was an ardent admirer of Bacon, on whose writings he published two works—Bacon tel qu’il est (8vo, Berlin, 1800), showing the bad faith of the French translator, who had omitted many passages favourable to revealed religion, and Précis de la philosophie de Bacon (2 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1802), giving an interesting view of the progress of natural science. Lettres sur le Christianisme (Berlin and Hanover, 1801, 1803) was a controversial correspondence with Dr Teller of Berlin in regard to the Mosaic cosmogony. His Traité élémentaire de géologie (8vo, Paris, 1809, also in English, by de la Fite, the same year) was principally intended as a refutation of the Vulcanian system of Hutton and Playfair, who deduced the changes of the earth’s structure from the operation of fire, and attributed a higher antiquity to the present state of the continents than is required in the Neptunian system adopted by Deluc after D. Dolomieu. He sent to the Royal Society, in 1809, a long paper on separating the chemical from the electrical effect of the pile, with a description of the electric column and aerial electroscope, in which he advanced opinions so little in unison with the latest discoveries of the day, that the council deemed it inexpedient to admit them into the Transactions. The paper was afterwards published in Nicholson’s Journal (xxvi.), and the dry column described in it was constructed by various experimental philosophers. This dry pile or electric column has been regarded as his chief discovery.
Many other of his papers on subjects kindred to those already mentioned are to be found in the Transactions and in the Philosophical Magazine. See Philosophical Magazine (November 1817).
DELUGE, THE (through the Fr. from Lat. diluvium, flood,
diluere, to wash away), a great flood or submersion of the earth (so
far as the earth was known to the narrators), or of heaven and
earth, or simply of heaven, by which, according to primitive and
semi-primitive races, chaos was restored. It is, of course, not
meant that all the current flood stories, as they stand, answer to
this description. There are flood stories which, at first sight,
may plausibly be held to be only exaggerated accounts of some
ancient historical occurrences. The probability of such traditions
being handed down is, however, extremely slight. If some flood
stories are apparently local, and almost or quite without mythical
colouring, it may be because the original myth-makers had a
very narrow conception of the earth, and because in the lapse of
time the original mythic elements had dwindled or even disappeared.
The relics of the traditional story may then have been
adapted by scribes and priests to a new theory. Many deluge
stories may in this way have degenerated. It is at any rate
undeniable that flood stories of the type described above, and
even with similar minor details, are fairly common. A conspectus
of illustrative flood stories from different parts of the
world would throw great light on the problems before us; see
the article Cosmogony, especially for the North American tales,
which show clearly enough that the deluge is properly a second
creation, and that the serpent is as truly connected with the
second chaos as with the first. One of them, too, gives a striking
parallel to the Babylonian name Ḫasis-andra (the Very Wise),
whence comes the corrupt form Xisuthrus; the deluge hero
of the Hare Indians is called Kunyan, “the intelligent.”
Polynesia also gives us most welcome assistance, for its flood
stories still present clear traces of the primitive imagination that
the sky was a great blue sea, on which the sun, moon and stars
(or constellations) were voyagers. Greece too supplies some
stimulus to thought, nor are Iran and Egypt as unproductive
as some have supposed. But the only pauses that we can allow
ourselves are in Hindustan, Babylonia and Canaan. The
peoples of these three countries, which are religiously so prominent
in antiquity, have naturally connected their name equally
with thoughts about earth production and earth destruction.
The Indian tradition exists in several forms.[1] The earliest is preserved in the Satapatha Brahmana. It is there related that Manu, the first man, the son of the sun-god Vivasvat, found, in bathing, a small fish, which asked to be tended, and in reward promised to save him in theIndian Tradition. coming flood. The fish grew, and at last had to be carried to the sea, where it revealed to Manu the time of the flood, and bade him construct a ship for his deliverance. When the time came, Manu, unaccompanied, went on board; the grateful fish towed the ship through the water to the summit of the northern mountain, where it bade Manu bind the vessel to a tree. Gradually, as the waters fell, Manu descended the mountain; he then sacrificed and prayed. In a year’s time his prayer was granted. A woman appeared, who called herself his daughter Idā (goddess of fertility). It is neither stated, nor even hinted, that sin was the cause of the flood.
Another version occurs in the great epic, the Mahābhārata. The lacunae of the earlier story are here supplied. Manu, for instance, embarks with the seven “rishis” or wise men, and takes with him all kinds of seed. The fish announces himself as the God Brahman, and enables Manu to create both gods and
- ↑ See Muir, Sanscrit Texts, i. 182, 206 ff.
