6 ACTION OF THE WATERS 



land, we may assume that all the animals, of whatso- 

 ever description, fled before the advancing flood, and 

 sought safety on the higher unsubmerged grounds 

 and hills, though many were overtaken and perished. 

 At the same time there is reason to believe that the 

 unequal strains produced by the great earth move- 

 ment disturbed and rent the rocks, for gaping 

 fissures were formed, 1 especially where strong divi- 

 sional planes in the strata favoured vertical dis- 

 ruption. 2 Thus, the hills of Devonian limestone near 

 Plymouth (postea, p. 26) ; the Cretaceous and Juras- 

 sic limestones of the South of France (p. 37), and 

 Italy, and of the Eock of Gibraltar ; the Tertiary and 

 Cretaceous limestones of the northern coasts and 

 Islands of the Mediterranean; together with the 

 limestone ranges of the North African coast (p. 59), 

 were rent in many places and to variable depths. As 

 the flood waters increased in depth, and the greater 

 became the destruction of animal (and some human) 

 life, decaying bodies and detached limbs would be 

 scattered over the submerged surface, more particu- 

 larly on those spots where the animals had ineffectu- 

 ally sought , refuge. As the land emerged again, 

 sometimes, as we shall show, slowly, and at others 

 more rapidly, the effluent waters swept into the open 

 fissures the debris of the old land surface, together 

 with the remains of the drowned animals, with more 



1 Had the fissures been of older date remains of an older 

 fauna would have been preserved (postea, p. 68). 



2 The surface waters had, in this case, little or nothing to do 

 with the formation of these fissures. 



