Mr. Whitehurst taught that the concentric arrangement of the crust of the globe was destroyed by the expansive force of subterranean fire.
Burnet's theory supposes this crust to have been broken for the production of the deluge.
Leibnitz and Buffon believed the earth to have been liquefied by fire; in fact, that it is an extinguished sun or vitrified globe, whose surface has been operated upon by a deluge. The latter assumes that the earth was 75,000 years in cooling to its present temperature, and that, in 98,000 years more, productive nature must be finally extinguished.
Woodward considered there was a temporary dissolution of the elements of the globe, during which period the extraneous fossils became incorporated with the general mass.
De Luc, Dolomieu, and, finally Baron Cuvier, unite in the opinion, that the phenomena exhibited by the earth, particularly the alternate deposits of terrestrial and marine productions, can only be satisfactorily accounted for by a series of revolutions similar to the deluge.
Among the singular views entertained by men of genius, in the infancy of the science, are those of Whiston, "who fancied that the earth was created from the atmosphere of one comet, and deluged by the tail of another;" and that, for their sins, the antediluvian population were drowned; "except the fishes, whose passions were less violent."
A French geologist conceived that the sea covered the earth for a vast period; that all animals were originally inhabitants of the water; that their habits gradually changed on the retiring of the waves, and "that man himself began his career as a fish!"—Mag. Nat. Hist.