35 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



discovery, in the Madras Presidency, of implements of quartzite of true 

 drift-type, found on the cliffs at an elevation of 300 feet above the 

 sea, in a bed of ferruginous clay, which forms the coast-line for several 

 hundred miles, and is intersected at right angles, at various intervals, 

 by the rivers of the country in making their way to the sea. 



In all these cases, all traces of the ancient rivers, if indeed they 

 ever existed, have been entirely effaced ; neither channels, nor outlets, 

 nor adequate water-sheds, nor a single land or river shell, remaining 

 to testify of them ; and not only so, but we find many deposits of 

 quaternary gravel (which Mr. Evans justly concludes to be of the 

 same geological period as those of the implements, and to owe their 

 existence and position to the same causes) on hills which could not 

 have been reached by modern rivers. The whole country would have 

 been a vast lake before such heights could have been submerged ; and 

 under such circumstances it may be fairly assumed that the same 

 forces, whatever they were, that covered the hill-tops, may have par- 

 tially filled up the valleys; the presence of gravel may suggest, but 

 cannot prove, that the river brought it, however much it may have re- 

 arranged and sorted it ; both valley and gravel may have had an ex- 

 istence before the river began its course. We have many valleys and 

 gravels without rivers, and rivers without gravels ; they can very well 

 exist apart, and doubtless have often done so. 



Fig. 6. Spindle- Whorl, from Holyheaa. 



One of the arguments usually relied upon, in support of the belief 

 in fiuviatile, as opposed to diluvial, agency in the formation of the de- 

 posits in which the stone implements are found, is founded on the as- 

 sumption that the constituents of these quaternary gravels are petro- 

 logically such, and only such, as belong to existing river-basins ; and 

 this fact, Mr. Evans says, holds good in France and England, and can- 

 not be too often reiterated. Without pausing to consider how far this 

 argument might avail as against those who, like Dr. Buckland, believe 

 in a simultaneous and universal cataclysm, it seems hardly applicable 





