CAUSE FOE THE ORIGIN OP THE TEAPITION OP THE PLOOD. 287 



above the level of the present river on the old alluvial plain 

 through which the river flowed before it reached the present 

 excavation of the valley. This is another subject with which 

 Professor Prestwich will be long associated in the history of 

 geological science, namely, in connection with river terraces. 



From the writings of Moses and from the Assyrian tablets, we 

 know of the Deluge. We know too, that such records of floods 

 have been common in the history of all nations. I do not suppose 

 any occurrence has impressed our feelings so strongly as that of 

 the risk of being drowned. I have, on two occasions, known 

 those feelings, and I can imagine that anyone who went through 

 the experience, in prehistoric times, would have retained a vivid 

 recollection of such peril. That any flood was ever universal is, of 

 course, a thing that must at once be dismissed from the mind of 

 any philosophically disposed person, and the author, you observe, 

 specially mentions that he does not for a moment assume any such 

 condition, for it would be subversive of all possibilities of the 

 conservation of the fauna and flora of the various countries as we 

 know them to exist at present. It would be impossible that the 

 fauna and flora of the tropics could have been preserved, or the 

 fauna and flora of the temperate zone, if the whole of the 

 terrestrial surfaces had ever been submerged at the same time. 

 We must bear in mind that Dr. Prestwich has spent many years 

 on these investigations, and in endeavouring to show that these 

 deposits, which he classifies under the name of " Rubble-Drift," are 

 one and the same deposit, and it would not be possible to discuss 

 here all the circumstances which may induce other geologists to 

 arrive at somewhat divergent views. These various deposits 

 extend through France, along the shores of the Mediterranean, 

 around our own island, and the Channel Islands, all of which the 

 author has referred to as being contemporaneous. With regard to 

 organic remains and the destruction of large numbers of terrestrial 

 animals at one time, we are all perfectly a-ware that a number of 

 circumstances may converge to the accomplishment of such events. 

 For instance, my friend Dr. Forsyth Major has discovered, in the 

 Island of Samos, the remains of hundreds of antelopes, giraifes, 

 proboscidea, edentata, and carnivora, all herded together and 

 destroyed in a common flood, probably due to the eruption of 

 a neighbouring volcano, the ashes from which, and the water, 

 forming a mud-debacle, pouring into the valley, destroyed 



