APPENDIX.
The last downfall of exterior vapors was at the time of Noah, and produced the deluge. These vapors naturally gravitated toward the polar regions and falling there as snows would accumulate as glaciers, their magnitude and extent corresponding with the amount of falling snows. It is evident if there ever was an Eden climate upon the earth its destruction was brought about by a change of climate. If the Deluge was a collapse of the last remnant of upper waters the latter must have begun to fall in polar regions many centuries previous.
The Eden world suffered a change of climate during the Adamic age, for the race that dwelt naked in Eden became clothed in the skins of animals. If this infant race dwelt naked the climate was warm. If afterward it became necessary to be clothed with the skins of animals it certainly had become cold. Ifthe cold increased it was probably caused by the fall of snow in polar regions. The physical condition of the antedeluvians and their environment depended on the conditions of the upper vapors. Hence, polar glaciers began to advance in Edenic times.
Glaciers advanced slowly, and are still advancing. Eight hundred years ago Greenland was not the frigid land it now is. The Icelanders and the Northmen sailed through northern seas in the interest of commerce where now our hardiest seamen with iron-clad vessels scarcely dare to venture. They pushed forward commercial enterprises into lands that are now inhospitable and uninhabited.
The present glaciation of polar worlds is but the result of the last declension of outward vapors. The great ice caps of polar regions are moving toward the equator and are constantly diminishing. It is possible that we are approaching a day when the last ice berg will be borne toward the tropics, and the last glacier will melt, and a more genial climate pervade the greater portion of the earth.
According to the biblical account people lived to be 800 and 900 years old. This was principally because of the modification of solar energy. Man’s physical environments impelled long life; and his longevity diminished immediately after the upper deep fell and the sun began to pour his beams upon the race; his environment evidently changed with that event. In a few generations after the flood man died at the age of 120 or 100 years, and finally at three score and ten.