CAUSE FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE TRADITION OF THE FLOOD. 281 



surface, and a land surface only. The bones of the animals 

 have evidently been subjected to considerable but not 

 lasting violence, for they are broken and splintered, yet not 

 tvorn ; aud though these remains are associated together in 

 as it were a, common grave, it is impossible to suppose that, 

 under the ordinary conditions of animal existence, such dis- 

 similar orders could have been associated in life ; nor, as the 

 bones q^xq, free from all traces of gnaioing, could those remains 

 have been collected and left by beasts of prey. These con- 

 current conditions, together with the mode of dispersion of 

 the Rubble-drift from many incUpendent centres, seem to me, 

 howsoever startling may be the conclusion, to be only explic- 

 able upon the hypothesis of a wide-spread, though local, and 

 short submergence followed by early re-elevation, and this 

 hypothesis will, I think, be found to satisfy all the important 

 conditions of the problem. 



In the first place the Eubble-drift overlies all the other 

 superficial deposits, and is therefore clearly the result of the last 

 geological event that preceded the recent Alluvial beds and 

 Neolithic man. Nowhere between the Rubble-drift and the 

 Alluvial beds have there been found any deposits of Quater- 

 nary age. Nor has there been any land-erosion indicating 

 a long lapse of time, though we have a fairly definite 

 measure of marine denudation in the wear of the Rubble-drift 

 where it has been exposed to the action of the sea, as on the 

 coasts of Cornwall, at Brighton, Barnstaple, Sangatte, and 

 around the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, and on the shores 

 of the Mediterranean. But the cliffs so formed would 

 certainly require no very great length of time for their 

 formation, as in no case do they seem to be worn back more 

 than half-a-mile, whilst in many cases it is not more than 

 100 to 200 feet. Reckoning therefore a mean rate of wear 

 on the coasts of the Channel say at one foot annually, this 

 comes well within the limits of date I have assigned to the 

 Rubble- drift. 



On Croll's estimate, however, for which Geologists mostly 

 have contended, a period of some 80,000 years intervened 

 between the disappearanceof Palseolithic Man, with the cotem- 

 porary extinct ]\Iammalia ot the Post-glacial period, and the 

 advent of Neolithic Man. Many years ago I expressed an 

 opinion, in which I am confirmed by the recent observations 

 of American geologists, that the close of the Glacial period 

 comes down to within about 10,000 to 12,000 years of our 

 own times. Not only is there nothing on geological grounds 



u 2 



