All the particulars of the Biblical narrative here recited are only to be explained by the volcanic and muddy eruption which preceded the formation of Mount Ararat. The waters which produced the inundation of these countries proceeded from a volcanic eruption accompanied by enormous volumes of vapor, which in due course became condensed and descended on the earth, inundating the extensive plains which now stretch away from the foot of Ararat. The expression, “the earth,” or “all the earth,” as it is translated in the Vulgate, which might be implied to mean the entire globe, is explained by Marcel de Serres, in a learned book entitled _La Cosmogonie de Moïse_, and other philologists, as being an inaccurate translation. He has proved that the Hebrew word _haarets_, incorrectly translated “all the earth,” is often used in the sense of _region_ or _country_, and that, in this instance, Moses used it to express only the part of the globe which was then peopled, and not its entire surface. In the same manner “_the mountains_” (rendered “_all the mountains_” in the Vulgate) only implies all the mountains known to Moses. Of this deluge many races besides the Jews have preserved a tradition. Moses dates it from 1,500 to 1,800 years before the epoch in which he wrote. Berosus, the Chaldean historian, who wrote at Babylon in the time of Alexander, speaks of a universal deluge, the date of which he places immediately before the reign of Belus, the father of Ninus. The _Vedas_, or sacred books of the Hindus, supposed to have been composed about the same time as Genesis, that is, about 3,300 years ago, make out that the deluge occurred 1,500 years before their time. The _Guebers_ speak of the same event as having occurred about the same date. Confucius, the celebrated Chinese philosopher and lawgiver, born toward the year 551 before Christ, begins his history of China by speaking of the Emperor named Jas, whom he represents as making the waters flow back, which, being _raised to the heavens_, washed the feet of the highest mountains, covered the less elevated hills, and inundated the plains. Thus the Biblical deluge is confirmed in many respects; but it was local, like all phenomena of the kind, and was the result of the upheaval of the mountains of western Asia. GLACIERS --LOUIS AGASSIZ