purely physical question, it would be but a fair presumption, founded on the almost invariable experience of ages, that the deductions from Scripture of the "plain men" regarding it would be, not true, but false deductions. Of apparently not more real weight and importance is the doctor's further remark, that there seems, after all, to be a marked difference between the terms in which the universality of the deluge is spoken of, and the terms employed in those admittedly metonymic passages in which the whole is substituted for a part. "What limitation," he asks, "can we assign to such a phrase as this:--'all the high hills that were UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVENS were covered?' If here the phrase had been, 'upon the face of the whole earth,' we should have been told that 'the whole earth' had sometimes the meaning of 'the whole land;' but, as if designedly to obviate such a limitation of meaning, we have here the largest phrase of universality which the language of man affords,--'under the whole heavens!'" So far Dr. Kitto. But his argument seems to be not more valuable in this case than in the other. It was upon the nations that were "UNDER THE WHOLE HEAVENS" that Deity represented himself as putting the fear and dread of the children of Israel; but he would be certainly a very "plain man" who would infer from the universality of a passage so evidently metonymic, that that fear extended to the people of Japan on the one hand, or to the Red Indians of the Rocky Mountains on the other. The phrase "_under the whole heavens_" seems to be but coextensive in meaning with the phrase "upon the face of the whole earth." The "whole earth" is evidently tantamount to the whole terrestrial floor,--the "whole heavens," to the whole celestial roof that arches over it; and on what principle the whole terrestrial floor is to be deemed less extensive than the floor under the whole celestial roof, really does not appear. Further, nothing can be more certain than that both the phrases contrasted by Dr. Kitto are equally employed in the metonymic form.