CHANGE OF THE CLIMATES.
The character and circumstances of the animal and vegetable remains discovered in the northern zone, in Siberia and other parts of Russia,—all with scarcely an exception belonging to 'genera' that are now only found in, and require, a tropical climate,—are such as receive no adequate solution from the hypothesis of their having been casually floated thither, and deposited, by the waters of a deluge, still less of the Noachian deluge, as related and described by the great Hebrew historian and legislator. In order to a full solution of this problem, two 'data' are requisite:
1. A total change of climate:
2. That this change shall have been, not gradual, but sudden, instantaneous, and incompatible with the life and subsistency of the animals and vegetables in these high latitudes, at that period, and previously, existing.
Now these 'data' or conditions will be afforded, if we assume a total submersion of the surface of this planet, even of its highest mountains then and now existing, by a sudden contemporaneous mass of waters, and that the evaporation of these waters was aided by a steady wind, especially adapted to this purpose in a peculiarly dry atmosphere, and was (as it must of necessity have been) most rapid and intense at the equator and within the tropics proportionally. For—as it has been demonstrated by Dr. Wollaston's experiment, in which the evaporation, occasioned by boiling water at the mid point of a line of water, froze the fluid at the two ends, that is, at a given distance from the greatest intensity of the evaporative process,—the effect of an evaporation of the supposed power and rapidity would be to produce at certain distances from the 'maximum' point, north and south, a vast barrier of ice,—such as having once taken place, and being of such mass and magnitude as to be only in a small degree diminishable by the ensuing summer, must have become permanent, and beyond the power of all the known and ordinary dissolving agents of nature. That the situation of the magnetic poles of the earth, and the almost certain connection of magnetism with cold, no less than with metallic cohesion, co-operated in determining the distance of the barriers, or two poles, of evaporation, from its centre or the 'maximum' of its activity, is highly probable, and receives a strong confirmation from the open sea and diminished cold, both at the north and south zones, on the ulterior of the barrier, and towards the true or physical poles of the earth.
Now the action of a powerful co-agent in the evaporative process, such as is assumed in this hypothesis, is a fact of history. 'And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged'. Gen. viii. 1. I do not recollect the Hebrew word rendered 'assuaged;' but I will consult my learned friend Hyman Hurwitz on its radical, and its primary sense. At all events, the note by Pyle in Drs. Mant and D'Oyly's Bible is arbitrary, though excusable by the state of chemical science in his time.
The problem of the multitude of 'genera' of animals, and their several exclusive acclimatements at the present period may, likewise, I persuade myself, receive a probable solution by an hypothesis legitimated by known laws and fair analogies. But of this hereafter.