17i BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



tion. That is what water would produce, and what we find 

 everywhere where its agency is unmistakable. And then, 

 within the mass where water has been active, we find unmis- 

 takable drift stratifications, — tliat is, the materials arranged in 

 layers or beds. If the water was not very active in its flow, 

 then we have i:.egular beds, resting one above the other, in suc- 

 cession. If the materials were carried forward by a current, 

 then we have a dove-tailed set of beds, interlocked with one 

 , another, and overlapping one another in various ways, but the 

 eye traces the arrangement in layers or beds. Now, such an 

 arrangement no man has ever seen in our drift. Another thing 

 is characteristic of all the loose materials which are accumulated 

 under the agency of water. Upon these layers, there are other 

 materials besides inorganic masses accumulated. Leaves may 

 be deposited upon them, the carcases of animals which are 

 floated by the water, and all the animals living in the water, 

 will each form such deposits. Wherever we find, for example, 

 gravel and sand and mud deposited on the seashore, we find 

 them full of the remains of shells, crabs, fish. All kinds of 

 living beings that inhabit the sea are found accumulated in 

 those deposits. In our drift, we have no trace of such remains ; 

 another evidence that they were not accumulated by the agency 

 of water. And yet, from the want of a proper explanation,- it 

 has been supposed that water was the principal agent in trans- 

 porting these materials. It has been supposed that a great 

 flood, arising from some disturbance in the ocean, swept vio- 

 lently over the whole continent, and that this flood, carrying 

 devastation before it, would, in the end, accumulate these mate- 

 rials, and Jeave no trace of organized beings in those deposits. 

 That may be ; but then, how can the absence of stratification be 

 accounted for, where water is introduced as the agent? for 

 water, actir.g on loose materials, cannot deposit them otherwise 

 than according to the laws of gravitation ; that is, the grosser 

 and heavier materials necessarily fall to the bottom first, and 

 the lighter materials are carried further forward. Now, in the 

 drift, there is no such arrangement. Wlioever will examine a 

 bluff of our drift, anywhere in the Northern States, or in the 

 British Provinces, from the coast of the Atlantic to the Rocky 

 Mountains, north of latitude thirty-six, will find that this drift 

 consists of all kinds of loose materials mixed together, without 



