Moses says that the fountains of the great deep were broken up (Gen. vii., 11). He believed that there was a subterranean abyss of water under the earth, {14a} and the Rev. William Kirby, in one of the “Bridgewater Treatises,” {14b} actually attempts to justify this notion. It would be an insult to the understanding of our reader to waste arguments on such a hypothesis. It is enough to state it, and it must fall with the weight of its own worthlessness. Again. Moses says, “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered” (Gen. vii., 19, 20). Moses says the depth of the water was 15 cubits, and that all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Of course the writer was ignorant of that simple principle, known now to every schoolboy, that water finds its level. He supposed that it would follow the irregularities of the earth’s surface, here investing a mountain and there dipping into the valleys, so that a uniform depth was preserved throughout, the highest hills being covered with a depth of 15 cubits like the valleys. We must, per force, believe this, or we are driven to the more unlikely hypothesis, that Moses supposed a level of some 30 feet deep of water would suffice to cover the loftiest mountains. {15} Whichever solution is taken, the inference is the same—that the statement is wholly irreconcilable with science. Once more. After the waters had prevailed for about a year, Noah sent forth a dove, and the dove came back to the ark with an “olive leaf plucked off” (Gen. viii., 11). This olive tree withstood the pelting rain, withstood the rush of the subsiding water, withstood the wind that drove the waters back to their abyss; but what is stranger still, it blossomed under water, and when its head was left towering above the flood which enveloped its trunk, its branches had put forth leaves. Probably the grass was not injured by the flood, as the beasts were dismissed from the ark to find their own food. Strange that trees and herbs, covered with a depth of 30 feet of water, should grow just as well as in the sunshine; but small inconsistencies of this sort are as nothing to the glaring impossibility of the whole legend.