343 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



may gladly welcome any attempt to deal with it, especially by one 

 who has given so much attention to its investigation. 



It was the opinion of the late Dr. Buckland, an opinion which was 

 concurred in by Greenough, Conybeare, and other able writers of their 

 time, that the general dispersion of gravel, sand, and loam, over hills 

 and elevated plains, as well as valleys, was the result of a universal 

 deluge, which is described as transient, simultaneous, and of a date 

 not very remote ; that the existing system of valleys was mainly due 

 to the same cause, and that thus both valleys and gravels preceded 

 our present river systems. Cuvier, and the French geologists gener- 

 ally, have held the same opinion, but of late years it seems to have 

 been altogether discredited by English authors, with perhaps the ex- 

 ception of the late Sir Roderick Murchison. We may well entertain 

 doubts as to the occurrence of a deluge that should be both universal 

 and simultaneous ; and it is probable that it is chiefly on that account 

 that Dr. Buckland's theory has met with so little favor. Still, al- 

 though we may be unable to adopt his views in their entirety, his 

 statements, as to the diluvial characters of the English drifts, seem en- 

 titled to some .further consideration before they are set aside alto- 

 gether, and on this account it is fortunate that the recent discoveries 

 of flint implements have excited so much interest in the gravels in 

 question, as to induce Mr. Evans to devote no inconsiderable portion 

 of his work to the history and antiquity of the river-drift. 



In the last chapter he has adduced an elaborate argument in favor 

 of the belief in fluviatile transport as opposed to diluvial, by showing 

 first, hypothetically, the possibility that " deposits now occupying the 

 summits of hills have originally been formed in and about river-beds," 

 and then, by reference to the actual phenomena, the probability that 

 the implement-bearing beds were thus formed. No one can doubt, 

 upon the hypothesis here ' stated, that rivers may have possessed 

 at one time a far greater power of excavating and deepening their 

 channels than now; but then the author is obliged to assume the prev- 

 alence of several conditions, and notably a far more rigorous climate, 

 and a greater amount of rainfall ; conditions as to which we have but 

 little evidence, and some of that is of a doubtful tendency. If, as is 

 now supposed, the hippopotamus and elephant and rhinoceros remained 

 here all the winter, they would have fared but badly, had the climate 

 been as severe as is supposed. 



But passing by these topics as not bearing very immediately upon 

 the question of transport, it cannot be doubted that submergence, by 

 means of diluvial action, is quite possible, since we have many in- 

 stances of it within the historical period, and some indeed within the 

 last few years ; and, both modes of transport being alike possible, the 

 probabilities of the case have alone to be considered ; and, notwith- 

 standing the various reasons so ably stated by Mr. Evans, it does not 

 seem that there are sufficient grounds for rejecting Dr. Buckland's 



