of its course is so widely different from the present situation of that river, and the present geography of the whole of those regions, that here at least a very great change must have occurred, in order to occasion this discrepancy between the old description of this river's course, and the present geography of the country. In another circumstance, also, which has been mostly too little attended to, this disparity between the Mosaic description and the present conformation of those regions is particularly striking. The geography of the rivers of Paradise, at least of two or three, may be easily traced, though the fourth remains a matter of uncertainty; but the one source of Paradise in which those four rivers had their rise, in order thence to spread, and diffuse fertility over the whole earth--this one source, which is precisely the object of most importance, can no where be found on the earth; whether it be dried or filled up, or howsoever it has been removed. In attending to some indications in Scripture, and without transgressing the due limits of interpretation, may we not be permitted to conjecture that the first chastisement inflicted on man by expulsion from his first glorious habitation and primeval home, may have been accompanied by a change in Paradise brought about by some natural convulsion? To judge by analogy, and from circumstances, which even a passage in Holy Writ alludes to, this convulsion must have been rather a volcanic eruption, by which even at the present day the sources of rivers are dried up, and their course completely changed, than a mere inundation that we are ever wont to regard as the sole possible cause of physical revolutions. Many vestiges of such changes may perhaps be proved from even geological observation;--thus to cite only one example, the dead sea in Palestine itself may be included in the number of those lakes that bear very evident traces of a volcanic origin. The supposition, however, which we have ventured to make, must not be looked upon in the light of a formal hypothesis, but rather as a question dictated by a love of enquiry, and by a desire for the further elucidation of a subject not yet sufficiently understood.