"These words ('the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; but the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,' Gen. x.), which announce the presage of a new morn of Creation, not only represent a darker and wilder state of the globe, but very clearly show the element of water to be still in predominant force. Even the division of the elements, of the waters above the firmament, and of the waters below it, on the second day of creation, the permanent limitation of the sea for the formation and visible appearance of the dry land, necessarily imply a mighty revolution in the earth, and afford additional proof that the Mosaic history speaks not only of one but of many catastrophes of nature, _a circumstance that has not been near enough attended to in the geological interpretation and illustration of the Bible_."--_Schlegel_, p. 82. [196] Kenrick (p. 37) says:--"The fact of traces of the action of water at a higher level in ancient times on these shores is unquestionable; under the name of _raised beaches_ such phenomena are familiar to geologists on many coasts; but that the tradition (in Samothrace) was produced by _speculation_ on its _cause_, not by an obscure recollection of its _occurrence_, is also clear; for it has been shown by physical proofs that a discharge of the waters of the Euxine (Black Sea) would not cause such a deluge as _the tradition supposed_" (Cuvier, Disc. sur les Revolutions du Globe, ed. 1826). If these speculations were made at the commencement of Grecian history, and the speculations had reference to evidence of diluvian disruption along the highway by which they passed into Greece, should we not expect that theories of the violent rather than the gentler and gradual action of water would dominate in their geological tradition? Colonel George Greenwood, in "Rain and Rivers," p. 2, says on the contrary--("with reference to the theory that valleys are formed by 'rain and rivers'")--"There is, perhaps, no creed of man which, like this, can be traced up to the most remote antiquity, and traced down from the most remote antiquity to the present day. Lyell has himself quoted Pythagoras for it, through the medium of Ovid:-- 'Eluvie mons est deductus in æquor Quodquo fuit campus _vallem decursus aquarum_ Fecit.'