power of evidence, the avowal of honest conviction, would expose them to the censures of some, who 'understand neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm, though they speak and write with a confidence in the direct proportion of their incompetency to say or affirm upon good grounds."
"The observations which, in their legitimate deductions, have produced this remarkable result, have been made by many persons, and those the best qualified, from their high attainments in all science, and the skill for making observations which long practice alone can give. They have been made in many countries, near and far distant; and they have been made with a circumspection, an exactitude, and an anxious watchfulness against the causes of mistake, which ought to command our admiration and gratitude."
The writer then presents a great number of reasons for this change of opinion among geologists, and afterwards gives the testimony of the more distinguished geologists, such as Dr. Buckland, Greenough, and others, in their own language. These authors unite in declaring that the various indications of diluvial action must be referred to several partial inundations, which have taken place at different times, among which the indications of the deluge described in scripture, cannot be identified or distinguished; that this opinion may now be advanced "with the authority of established truth;" that the former opinion may be regarded as "a philosophic heresy," and that "we have not found the certain traces of any great diluvial catastrophe which we can affirm to be within the human period." The following passages are taken from a report read before the Geological Society of London, in the year 1834, by Mr. Greenough, at that time President of that Society. It is an honorable and noble minded acknowledgment of the removal of a former error by the superior force of truth. Mr. G. says:
"Some fourteen years ago, I advanced an opinion, founded altogether upon physical and geological considerations
