CAUSE FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE TRADITION OF THE FLOOD. 301 



deposits in the south part of England, France, and the countries 

 bordering tlie Mediterranean Sea, but feel compelled to differ froni 

 hitn in the view to be taken for their explanation. Although he 

 ascribes the rubble drift in southern England and Wales to rapid 

 emergence of the land from a marine submergence of about 1,000 

 feet, the only fossils found in the formation are those of land 

 shells and land animals, and no shore line nor terrace of marine 

 erosion or beach deposition has been detected, such as would mark 

 the culminating limits or stages in the oncoming and waning, of 

 the submergence. Professor Prestwich thinks that the effects 

 observed indicate simply currents of the sea flowing down the 

 hillsides while the laud was quickly rising, rather than that the 

 rubble transportation was due to waves of earthquake origin. It 

 is very difScnlt, however, for me at least, to see how such currents 

 could produce the observed results. The total rise being only about 

 1,000 feet, it would hardly have more effect than the flow of a 

 powerful river current upon its banks during the few minutes in 

 which the flow would advance 1,000 feet. If the emergence were at 

 the rate of the fall of tides, as one or two feet in an hour, 25 or 50 

 feet in a day, and the whole amount in a month, more or less, 

 requiring a longer time if subdivided by intervals of rest, it would 

 evidently be quite inadequate to form the rubble drift. But so 

 sudden, and not seismic, uplifting of extensive areas, as western 

 and southern Europe, appears, at least in my opinion, to be 

 physically impossible. 



It seems to me, on the other hand, far more probable that the 

 true explanation of the origin of the rubble drift is supplied by the 

 second alternative hypothesis that has been held concerning it, 

 which Professor Prestwich states but rejects, namely, " that during* 

 the Glacial period, sheets of frozen snow or ice slid down the hill 

 slopes above, and carried with them the debris of the surface." 

 The region lies south of the limit of the ice-sheet aiid the true 

 glacial drift, but I think that during a short time, coincident with 

 the European glaciation, this western side of the land areas in the 

 eastern hemisphere Avas greatly but slowly iiplifted (to the extent 

 of the " 2,000 feet or more " which Professor Prestwich mentions 

 when refei-ring to this hypothesis in his paper in the Quarterly 

 ■Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xlviii, 1892), causing the 

 southern part of Great Britain and all the countries of southern 

 Europe and northern Africa to experience much more severely 

 frosty and snowy winters than now. 



The earliest statement of this view that I have found is by Mr. 

 R. A. C. Godwin- Austen, who, in 1851, treating of the " Superficial 

 Accumulations of the Coasts of the English Channel, and the 

 Changes they indicate," concluded that there was " an elevation of 

 great amount, such as would place the whole of the higher 

 portions of this country in regions of excessive cold," and " that, 

 with respect to movements of the earth's crust in this region, 



