When the atmosphere of the comet was once disembarrassed from all the solid and terrestrial matters, there remained only the lighter air, through which the rays of the sun freely passed and instantly produced light: "Let there be light, and there was light." The columns which composed the orb of the Earth being formed with such great precipitation is the cause of their different densities: consequently the heaviest sunk deeper into this subterraneous fluid than the lightest; and it is this which has produced the vallies and mountains on the surface of the earth. These inequalities were, before the deluge, dispersed and situated otherwise than they are at present. Instead of the vast valley, which contains the ocean, there were many small divided cavities on the surface of the globe, each of which contained a part of this water; the mountains were also more divided, and did not form chains as at present: nevertheless, the earth contained a thousand times more people, and was a thousand times more fertile; and the life of man and other animals were ten times longer, all which was affected by the internal heat of the earth that proceeded from the centre, and gave birth to a great number of plants and animals, bestowing on them a degree of vigour necessary for them to subsist a long time, and multiply in great abundance. But this heat, by increasing the strength of bodies, unfortunately extended to the heads of men and animals; it augmented their passions; it deprived man of his innocence, and the brute creation of part of their intelligence; all creatures, excepting fish, who inhabited a colder element, felt the effects of this heat, became criminal and merited death. It therefore came, and this universal death happened on Wednesday the 28th of November, by a terrible deluge of forty days and forty nights, and was caused by the tail of another comet which encountered the earth in returning from its perihelion.
The tail of a comet is the lightest part of its atmosphere; it is a transparent mist, a subtile vapour, which the heat of the sun exhales from the body of the comet: this vapour composed of extremely rarefied aqueous and aerial particles, follows the comet when it descends to its perihelion, and precedes when it re-ascends, so that it is always situate opposite to the sun, as if it sought to be in the shade, and avoid the too great heat of that luminary. The column which this vapour forms is often of an immense length, and the more a comet approaches the sun, the longer and more extended is its tail, and as many comets descend below the annual orb of the earth, it is not surprising that the earth is sometimes found surrounded with the vapour of this tail; this is precisely what happened at the time of the deluge. In two hours the tail of a comet will evacuate a quantity of water equal to what is contained in the whole ocean. In short, this tail was what Moses calls the cataracts of Heaven, "and the cataracts of Heaven were opened." The terrestrial globe meeting with the tail of a comet, must, in going its course through this vapour, appropriate to itself a part of the matter which it contains; all which, coming within the sphere of the earth's attraction, must fall on it, and fall in the form of rain, since this tail is partly composed of aqueous vapours. Thus rain may come down in such abundance as to produce an universal deluge the waters of which might easily surmount the tops of the highest mountains. Nevertheless, our author, cautious of not going directly against the letter of holy writ, does not say that this rain was the sole cause of the universal deluge, but takes the water from every place he can find it. The great abyss as we see contains a considerable quantity. The earth, at the approach of the comet, would prove the force of its attraction; and the waters contained in the great abyss would be agitated by so violent a kind of flux and reflux, that the superficial crust would not resist, but split in several places, and the internal waters be dispersed over the surface, "And the fountains of the abyss were opened."