Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 31

Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time 31
extent (half the earth's surface) of the seas. 4 Concluding that the seas could not
nearly bury the continents, calculating that forty days and nights of rain would
add little (and only recycle seawater in any case), and rejecting, as
methodologically destructive to his rational program, the divine creation of new
water, Burnet had to seek another source. He fixed upon a worldwide layer of
water, underlying and concentric with the original crust of the earth's
Figure 2.2
Burnet attempts to assess the amount of water in the oceans by the
classical method of sounding. (From first edition.)
4. Burnet, who was not the armchair speculator of legend, lamented the absence of adequate
maps to make assessments and calculations for these key elements of his theory: "To this
purpose I do not doubt but that it would be of very good use to have natural maps of the
earth . . . Methinks every prince should have such a draught of his own country and dominions,
to see how the ground lies . . . which highest, which lowest . . . how the rivers flow, and why;
how the mountains stand . . ." (p. 112).