244 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



that have been transported from distant countries, 

 and filled with bones of land animals, the species 

 of which are for the most part unknown, or at 

 least foreign to the country in which they are 

 found, seem especially to have covered all the 

 plains, filled the bottom of all the caverns, and 

 choked up all the fissures of rocks that have corne 

 in their way. Described with particular care by 

 Mr Buckland, under the name of diluvium, and 

 very different from those other beds equally 

 consisting of transported matters, continually de- 

 posited by torrents and rivers, which contain only 

 bones of animals that still live in the country, 

 and distinguished by the name of alluvium, the 

 former are now considered by all geologists as ex- 

 hibiting the most obvious proof of the immense 

 inundation which has been the last of the cata- 

 strophes of our globe *. 



Between this diluvium and the chalk, are the 

 formations alternately filled with fresh water and 

 salt water productions, which mark the irruptions 

 and retreatings of the sea, to which this part of 

 the globe has been subjected, since the deposition 

 of the chalk-strata : first, marls and buhrstones, 



* See Professor Buckland's work, entitled Reliquiae 

 Diluviance. Lond. 1823, 4to, p. 185 et seq. ; and the article 

 Eau, by M. Brongniart, in the l4th volume of the Diction- 

 des Sciences Naturelles. 





