THE HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AT OXFORD. 43 



views appear, was published in 1823, and by its skill, learn- 

 ing, and eloquence at once attracted universal admiration. 



But Buckland, though he appears in this work as an 

 advocate, was by no means merely an advocate, his was a 

 mind too highly endowed to rest satisfied with any but 

 the most convincing proof, and as time elapsed, and he ex- 

 tended his researches, the evidence, which he so industri- 

 ously accumulated, so far from strengthening his position, 

 began to gradually undermine it, and already in 1837, when 

 he published his great work on Geology and Mineralogy 

 Considered zvitk Reference to Natural Theology, we find 

 him wavering - . While still asserting the occurrence of a 

 diluvial catastrophe, he was prepared to abandon the view, 

 which would connect this with the Noachian deluge. " It 

 has been justly argued," he writes, " that as the rise and 

 fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to 

 have been gradual and of short duration, they would have 

 produced comparatively little change on the surface of the 

 country they overflowed. . . . This important point, how- 

 ever, cannot be considered as completely settled till more 

 detailed investigations of the newest members of the Plio- 

 cene and of the diluvial and alluvial formations shall have 

 taken place." 



Scarcely a year had elapsed after this opinion had been 

 expressed when investigations were commenced, which 

 were to cast a flood of light on the question from an un- 

 expected quarter. Agassiz in 1838 was already engaged 

 in those observations on the glaciers of Switzerland, and 

 had commenced that series of brilliant discoveries which 

 eventually culminated in a clear and reasonable explanation 

 of the so-called diluvial phenomena. Buckland's study of 

 these phenomena in Europe and the British Isles had 

 rendered him the first authority of the time on this subject, 

 though the cause of these phenomena, as we now know, was 

 really not diluvial as he then imagined, but glacial. Buck- 

 land therefore was perfectly familiar with all the signs now 

 recognised as characteristic of ice-action, no man more so : 

 consequently when Agassiz took him over the glaciers of 

 Switzerland, and showed him these agents actually at work, 



