343 

 SCIENTIFIC REVIEWS. 



An Account of the Great Floods of August 1829, in the Province 

 of Moral/ and adjoinins Districts. By Sib Thomas Dick 

 Laudek, Bart. F.R.S.E. 1 Vol. 8vo. Pp. 431. 64 Plates. 

 Black, Edinburgh, 1830. 



We have heard it often surmized, and have further seen the in- 

 quiries of critics, whether the subject of the work before us were 

 of sufficient importance to warrant the labour of a detailed account. 

 We have to answer to this, in the first place, that, exaggerated on 

 the one hand, too much neglected and undervalued on the other, 

 the effects of water, of streams, and rivulets, in modifying the con- 

 figuration of the soil, and producing changes in the nature of its 

 mineral beds, are of the highest importance to philosophical theo- 

 ries of the earth. The action of these waters, increased in time of 

 sudden rise and flood, is then capable of producing effects which 

 the calm contemplator of a stream, murmuring in sadness along its 

 green banks, or rippling through its rocky bed, may sometimes con- 

 ceive by the strength of his imagination, though he has not bold- 

 ness enough to avow his belief. If all the floods and storms, from 

 that which in its fury bore away the mountain and the hamlet, and 

 left villages so many sightless ruins, — to the Deluge, which swept 

 a nation from the surface of the earth, — had been chronicled with 

 the same minute fidelity as the flood of Morayshire, what valuable 

 data should we have for calculating the action of the elements on 

 the terrestrial globe, and the slow but steady progress of the most 

 important changes ! 



In the second place. Science, which is only the application of 

 one fact to the knowledge and appropriation of another, claims these 

 gleanings as her own on other grounds ; for she is aware that they 

 may be used in the great cause of humanity. From accurate details 

 of the origin and nature of former accidents, we learn to provide 

 against the occurrence of others. The inhabitant of an hydrogra- 

 phical basin, like that of Morayshire, must be as well prepared for 

 the sudden rise of the waters of its numerous and divided streams, 

 as the Swiss peasant for the rush of the Lauwine, or the chalets of 

 the Don for the descent of the tottering chalk-cliffs of the dark and 

 lofty glens which lie between that river and the Wolga. JMeteoro- 

 logical observations are here of the highest importance, and may be 

 brought to bear upon phenomena which have been already the sub- 

 ject of observation ; while the immediate causes of the peculiari- 

 ties presented by these phenomena, can only be explained by men 

 versed in physical geography, or well acquainted both with the 

 mineralogical structure of the globe, and with the important science 

 of hydrography. 



Rivers and rivulets which may be considered as tending to 

 unite with, or flow into a supposed prolongation of a main stream. 



