Outlines of Geology. 1^7 



with it, and which occurred before many of the hills and valleys 

 that now lie between the sources of the boulders and their present 

 situations were formed and excavated. That our present torrents 

 could never have moved these mighty masses, considered inde- 

 pendent of their origin and localities, is quite obvious ; and hence 

 some have been driven to the necessity of assuming a sudden dis- 

 ruption of the chaotic ocean, attended by earthquakes, which rent 

 the strata, and loosened the masses that we now find transferred 

 to places far distant from their original homes ; but the event 

 of the deluge will amply suffice as the cause of these phoenomena. 

 Certain it is that no powers now active can be considered as effi- 

 cient for the production of our beds of gravel, and much less for 

 the transportation of boulder stones, and that we must go back to 

 a different aspect and state of the earth's sur/ace from that which 

 it now presents, and that we must suppose planes to have existed 

 where the surface is now irregular. To illustrate this position by 

 actual occurrences, we must suppose that the blocks of granite 

 met with in the recesses of Mount Jura, and which if we consider 

 them as derived from the source nearest at hand, must once have 

 formed part of Mont Blanc, attest the non-existence of the Valley 

 of the Rhone, and of the Lake of Geneva, at the time of their 

 transportation. That the parasitic gravel and soil of the island 

 of Malta attest the non-existence of the Mediterranean at the 

 time they were there deposited. That the blocks of primitive 

 Norwegian rocks that are scattered over the north of Germany, 

 Russia, and Holland, and occasionally met with on the east coast 

 of England, announce the non-existence of the Baltic and German 

 Sea while these blocks were in motion. And lastly, to come 

 nearer home, the beds of pebbles and pieces of granite and quartz 

 that constitute the diluvium deposited upon the little island of 

 Staffa, could not have resulted from the flow of water in the 

 present state of things, but must be referred to an antecedent 

 period when Sratfa formed part of Mull, or when the whole was 

 perhaps a promontory of the main land. If we imagine, says Dr. 

 Mac CuUoch, the origin of the alluvial matter to be in Mull only, 

 it still proves great changes; if we suppose, as some have sup- 



