42 Finch on the Tertiary Formations, §c. 
the peaceful villagers, overwhelm houses, trees and forests 
in their irresistible progress, and many villages marked i 
the records of the middle ages, have been destroyed by it. 
The same soil produces the same effect, though upon dis- 
tant continents ; and the upper marine sands of Virginia 
imitate upon a small scale the devastations committed by 
their brothers in Guienne. 
At Cape Henry, the sands yearly advance, surround the 
cottages and light-house, overwhelm gradually a. noble for- 
est, and carry devastation in their train. The description 
applied by Latrobe to the advance of one of these sands, 
And that system of agriculture which has converted the 
barren sands of Norfolk into fertile and beautiful farms, 
might be introduced upon the same formations in America, 
making some allowance for difference of climate. 
At Staten Island, the sand upon one part of the coast be- 
gins to. overwhelm a grove of white cedar; and upon some 
of ihe hills of Brooklyn opposite New-York, 1 have ob- 
served the sand gradually carried forward by the wind, and 
the whole surface of the bill apparently changing its posi- 
tion. 
ne 7. Diluvial, 
HOS. 
After the production of these regular strata of sand, clay, 
limestone, &c. came a terrible irruption of water from the 
north, or north-west, which in many places covered the 
ceding formations with diluvial gravel, and carried along 
with it those immense masses of granite, and the older 
rocks, which attest to the present day the destruction and 
ruin of a former world. bond 
‘Many more instances might be adduced to establish the 
identity of what has been called the alluvial. district in 
merica, with the tertiary formations of England and the 
continent of Europe ; but the object of the present memoir 
is merely to draw the attention of Geologists to the subject. 
