202 Dr Daubeny on the Diluvial Theory, 



wait with patience for the slow but sure judgment of the public, 

 to pronounce upon the points at issue between us. 



I have been induced, however, to depart from this my ori- 

 ginal purpose, chiefly in consequence of the perusal of my 

 friend Mr LyelPs work, entitled, " Principles of Geology ;" 

 not from any ambition on my part to contend generally against 

 the views he has put forth, but from an anxiety to explain my- 

 self more fully than I have hitherto had occasion to do on a 

 question much agitated in his volume, I mean the causes to 

 which the excavation of valleys is to be referred — seeing that 

 the nomenclature, as well as to a certain degree the theoretical 

 tiews I have adopted in my Description of Volcanos *, with re- 

 ference to this subject, are those of writers to whom the author 

 alluded to seems directly opposed. 



Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that the discrepancy be- 

 tween his opinions and my own on this particular point, reduces 

 itself almost to a question of degree ; for I observe that in more 

 than one passage of his work, the probability of extensive floods 

 having from time to time occurred in consequence of the burst- 

 ing of vast lakes, is distinctly admitted, and it can hardly be 

 doubted, but that from such catastrophes wpuld result eff'ects of 

 a similar nature to those commonly ascribed to that diluvial 

 action so insisted on by geologists of a different school. 



it is, however, no less true, that, in accounting for this class 

 df' phenomena, much greater stress is laid in his treatise on the 

 long continued operation of causes of daily occurrence, than on 

 the consequences of such occasional catastrophes, and that many 

 might rise from its perusal under an impression, that geo- 

 logists of the pfesent day, who take a different view of such 

 phenomena, still adhere to the doctrine maintained by their pre- 

 decessors, who, to use Mr LyelPs words, supposed " that the 

 monuments which they endeavoured to decipher relate to a pe- 

 riod when the physical constitution of the earth differed entire- 

 ly from the present, and that even after the creation of living 

 beings there have been causes in action, distinct in kind or de^ 

 gree from those forming a part of the present economy of na- 

 ture." 



• A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos. By Charles Daubeny, 

 M.D. F.K.S. &c. &c. 8vo. 

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