We shall now proceed to inquire in what manner the mortal remains of man and the works of his hands may be permanently preserved in subaqueous strata. Of the many hundred million human beings which perish in the course of every century on the land, every vestige is usually destroyed in the course of a few thousand years, but of the smaller number that perish in the waters, a considerable proportion must frequently be entombed, under such circumstances, that parts of them may endure throughout entire geological epochs.

We have already seen how the bodies of men, together with those of the inferior animals, are occasionally washed down during river-inundations into seas and lakes, of which we shall now enumerate some additional examples.

Belzoni witnessed a flood on the Nile in September, 1818, where, although the river only rose three feet and a half above its ordinary level, several villages, with some hundreds of men, women, and children, were swept away. We mentioned in a former volume that a rise of six feet of water in the Ganges in 1763, was attended with a much greater loss of lives.

In the year 1771, at the time of the bursting of the Solway moss before alluded to, when the inundations in the north of England appear to have equalled the recent floods in Morayshire, a great number of houses and their inhabitants were swept away by the rivers Tyne, Can, Wear, Tees, and Greta; and no less than twenty-one bridges were destroyed in the courses of these rivers.