Antediluvian Congelation of the Water o/Bocke, 46 



moved out of their native beds and connections. To aid, if 

 not completely to satisfy our enquiry on this point, we have 

 recourse to the agency of water moving and eddying over the 

 disintegrated strata, and that in a body of considerable depth, 

 agitated most probably by strong undulations and varying 

 currents. The superficial beds of the laminated sandstone 

 rocks, loosened and fractured by the previous congelations and 

 thawings of infiltrated water, would, more or less readily, yield 

 to the force of any body of water afterwards moving over 

 them. The more superficial disrupted laminations would obey 

 the more easily the force and direction of the aqueous cur- 

 rents, would suffer the greater locomotion or transportation, 

 and would be more intermixed with any sand or soft detritus 

 which the waters were carrying along with them ; while the 

 deeper placed fragments would sufi^er less commotion and in- 

 termixture, in proportion as they lay nearer to the compact or 

 mother rock. These are the very characteristic features which 

 the several parts of the fragmentary beds now exhibit. The 

 rush of such sedimentous and muddy waters over the crests or 

 brows of the elevated rocks in question, would also have the 

 effect of sweeping the disintegrated beds off the elevated parts 

 of the compact rock, and of depositing the fragments on its 

 inclined or more sheltered sides. The hydraulic force, being 

 of a certain amount, but not turbulent, would simply move the 

 fragments on their planes to distances more or less limited, 

 but still confined to the immediate precincts of the parent rock ; 

 while slight changes in the direction of the moving current 

 would force some small series of the fragments into greatly 

 inclined positions, or twist others, lying in a vertical series, 

 more or less round on their perpendicular axes. I need not 

 again remark, how much several of the appearances of these 

 fragmentary beds are found to correspond with this natural 

 effect of a deep aqueous current moving over the surface of 

 materials, so prepared by previous congelation and thawing to 

 undergo what is now witnessed. 



That such a current or deluge of sedimentous waters once 

 moved over the surface of these rocks, and also over the neigh- 

 bouring countries with a varying velocity, direction, and depth, 

 is, moreover, very obvious from the many superficial deposits 



