230 Rev. \V. V. Vernon on a Discovery 



mation, one which had rolled less fai' or with less force and 

 rapidity. At Middleton on the AVolds, upon ground of con- 

 siderable height there is a vast accumulation of sand and chalk 

 gravel worked to a depth of thirty or forty feet ; in this are 

 numerous blocks of porphyry, mixed with whinstone, lias, 

 and sandstone ; there are also pieces of cornelian and jasper, 

 but I did not find the blue limestone or slate. Four or five 

 miles south of this there is another deep gravel-pit, formed 

 as I conceive by the same current after the deposition of the 

 larger blocks ; nothing is to be seen here among the chalk 

 and flint rubble but some small pieces of sandstone and a few 

 rounded pebbles of quartz, which are also found in the sand 

 and gravel over the marl at Biel beck house. 



Since the bones then were buried in this marl, greater 

 floods have passed over them than any inundations of the 

 Humber. The facts which I have mentioned show that the 

 country has been subsequently deluged by two consecutive 

 currents from the north, the one setting probably more from 

 the westward than the other; I say consecutive, for there is 

 no reason to think that they followed at distant intervals. 

 There are in the Yorkshire Museum remains of elephant and 

 rhinoceros from the higher diluvium. I have lately received, 

 from the Rev. R. Cooke, the grinder of an elephant found 

 thirty feet deep in the white gravel of Middleton ; and there 

 are now discovered teeth of the elephant and rhinoceros from 

 a still lower deposit : but all these remains belong not only 

 to the same genera but to the same species of animals, — species 

 different from any which are buried in the regular strata, and 

 different from any which now exist, yet connected with the 

 existing animal kingdom by the shells which accompany them. 

 This marks at least a pecuUar epoch ; and no account of the 

 phajnomena can be given so simple as that which supposes the 

 flood recorded by Moses to have occasioned the general 

 wreck, to have destroyed the most formidable species which 

 inhabited the temperate regions of the earth, to have mingled 

 their remains with the gravel, and to have thrown an additional 

 covering over them when already buried in the marl. 



If this be allowed, and if the facts given in this paper are 

 correctly stated, it should seem probable that the deluge 

 passed away without altering in any very considerable degree 

 the condition of the earth ; that the relative level of land and 

 sea has undergone little alteration ; that the climate is nearly 

 the same, and that the species and varieties of plants and sta- 

 tionary animals are absolutely identical with what they were 

 njore than foiu- thousand years ago. 



Account 



