in a general sense, denotes something pro-

found, and, as it were, bottomless. The word is originally Greek, ἀβύσσος; compounded of the privative α, and βυσσός, q. d. without a bottom.

in a more particular sense, denotes a deep mass or fund of waters. In this sense, the word is particularly used in the Septuagint, for the water which God created at the beginning with the earth, which encompassed it round, and which our translators render by deep. Thus it is that darkness is said to have been on the face of the abyss.

ABYSS is also used for an immense cavern in the earth, in which God is supposed to have collected all those waters on the third day; which, in our version, is rendered the seas, and elsewhere the great deep. Dr Woodward, in his Natural History of the Earth, asserts, That there is a mighty collection of waters enclosed in the bowels of the earth, constituting a huge orb in the interior or central parts of it; and over the surface of this water he supposes the terrestrial strata to be expanded. This, according to him, is what Moses calls the great deep, and what most authors render the great abyss. The water of this vast abyss, he alleges, communicates with that of the ocean, by means of certain hiatuses or chasms passing betwixt it and the bottom of the ocean; and this and the abyss he supposes to have one common centre, around which the water of both is placed; but so, that the ordinary surface of the abyss is not level with that of the ocean, nor at so great a distance from the centre as the other, it being for the most part restrained and depressed by the strata of earth lying upon it: but wherever these strata are broken, or so lax and porous that water can pervade them, there the water of the abyss ascends; fills up all the clefts and fissures into which it can get admittance; and saturates all the interstices and pores of the earth, stone, or other matter, all around the globe, quite up to the level of the ocean.

The existence of an abyss or receptacle of subterraneous waters, is controverted by Camerarius*; and * Dissert. defended by Dr Woodward chiefly by two arguments: Taur. Acta. the first drawn from the vast quantity of water which covered the earth, in the time of the deluge; the sec- tom. vi. p. 24. ond, from the consideration of earthquakes, which he endeavours to show are occasioned by the violence of the waters in this abyss. A great part of the terrestrial globe has been frequently shaken at the same mo- Hist. of ment; which argues, according to him, that the wa- the Earth. ters, which were the occasion thereof, were coextended Journal de with that part of the globe. There are even instances Sycam. of universal earthquakes; which (says he) show, that p. 393. the whole abyss must have been agitated; for so gene- Memoirs of ral an effect must have been produced by as general a cause, and that cause can be nothing but the subterra- p. 107 &c. neous abyss†.

To this abyss also has been attributed the origin of springs and rivers; the level maintained in the sur- tred.to faces of different seas; and their not overflowing their Wood- banks. To the effluvia emitted from it, some even attribute all the diversities of weather and change in our atmosphere‡. Ray ||, and other authors, ancient Acta Erud. as well as modern, suppose a communication between 1727, the Caspian sea and the ocean by means of a subterra- P. 13. mean abyss; and to this they attribute it that the Cas- Physico- pian does not overflow, notwithstanding the great num- Disc. ii. c. 2. ber of large rivers it receives, of which Kemfer rec-p. 76. kons Abyss. kons above 45 in the compass of 60 miles; though others suppose that the daily evaporation may suffice to keep the level.

The different arguments concerning this subject may be seen collected and amplified in "Cockburn's Inquiry into the Truth and Certainty of the Mosaic Deluge," p. 271, &c. If we believe any thing like elective attraction to have prevailed in the formation of the earth, it seems absurd to suppose that the heavier and denser bodies gave place to the more light and fluid; that the central part should consist of water only, and the more superficial part of a crust or shell. See DELUGE.

Abyss is also used to denote hell; in which sense the word is synonymous with what is otherwise called Barathrum, Erebus, and Tartarus; in the English Bible, the bottomless pit. The unclean spirits expelled by Christ, begged, ne imperaret ut in abyssum irent, according to the vulgate; οὐκ ἀβύσσων, according to the Greek, Luke viii. 31. Rev. ix. 1.

Abyss is more particularly used, in antiquity, to denote the temple of Proserpine; so called on account of its riches.

Abyss is also used in Heraldry to denote the centre of an escutcheon. In which sense a thing is said to be borne in abyss, en abysme, when placed in the middle of the shield, clear from any other bearing: He bears azure, a flower de lis, in abyss.