92 M. Renoir on the Traces of Ancient Glaciers. 



pose that, on the contrary, they receded slowly on the increase 

 of the water, and without alarm, entering the caverns when 

 the water had reached their level, they would have been 

 drowned there before having time to devour each other ; for 

 if all the various species entombed in these common recep- 

 tacles killed each other only from antipathy, the bones of the 

 carnivora would not be gnawed. With regard to the mud 

 which covers to a greater or less thickness the bottom of the 

 caverns in which these fossils are buried, it has evidently been 

 deposited by water. Its formation is very simply explained 

 by considering that the numerous and powerful torrents which 

 escaped from all parts of the melted ice, covering the moun- 

 tains to heights generally much more elevated than the open- 

 ings of the caverns, must have penetrated into all the crevices 

 and gaps of the mountains, and then into the caverns, inun- 

 dating them for a long time. 



It will be found, on a close examination, that every thing 

 in the present state of the surface of the globe concurs in de- 

 monstrating to us the ancient existence of general ice. It is 

 of great importance to science to establish this grand truth. 

 It affords us at once, and in the most natural and complete 

 manner, an explanation of all the phenomena termed diluvian^ 

 the cause of which has remained unknown up to the present 

 time, and which had been vaguely referred to a universal in- 

 undation. The latter did not in other respects answer the 

 conditions of the problem, and its physical impossibility is clearly 

 ascertained.* 



Notices of Earthquake-Shocks felt in Great Britain^ and espe- 

 cially in Scotland^ with inferences suggested hy these notices 

 as to the causes of such Shocks. By David Milne, Esq., 

 F.R.S.E., M.W.S., F.G.S., &;c. Communicated by the 

 Author. 



There seems to be no class of phenomena so intimately 

 connected with the laws which belong to the physical consti- 

 tution of our globe, or which so directly lead to a knowledge 

 of its interior structure, as those exhibited by volcanoes and 

 earthquakes. But, on the other hand, there is no depart- 

 ment of ph} sical science, over which, unfortunately, there 

 «i«i. ■ ■■■■■■. — ^ — . , , 



* fiulkiin d« k S^ocicW Ccologique d« Jt'rancG, Fcv. 1C41, p. 68* 



