Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 37

a coming worldwide conflagration that shall completely consume the upper
layers of the earth and remobilize all resulting particles into a new chaos.
Burnet continues to demand a rational, physical explanation. In successive
chapters, he discusses how such a wet and rocky mass can burn (the waters
will first evaporate in a major drought), how the jumbled surface of our
ruined earth will abet
Figure 2.7
The earth's surface in its paradisiacal state. Rivers run from high latitudes and
dissipate in the tropics. Four trees mark the position of Eden at a convenient
middle latitude in the southern hemisphere. (From first English edition.)