CAUSE FOE THE ORIGIN OP THE TRADITION OP THE PLOOD. 303 



represents various fluviatile deposits all of older date than the 

 Rubble-drift. With regard however to the Diluvium rouge, some 

 of it probably represents a phase of the Rubble-drift. 



In reply to Professor Hughes, it is not intended to mean that the 

 flood was of a very violent character, on the contrary, the Submerg- 

 ence was apparently on the whole so quiet as to have been hardly 

 perceptible. The great transporting power came into operation at 

 intervals during the re-elevation of the land, and these have pro- 

 duced effects such as transporting blocks of twelve feet or more in 

 diameter along small inclines, which none of the slight changes he 

 refers to could have effected. Richthofen's views with regard to 

 the origin of the Loess have been noticed in his Royal Society 

 paper. He (Professor Prestwich) considers, however, that the 

 Loess of China has had a different origin from the high-level Loess 

 of Europe. The gi^oup of animals found in the surface Rubble- 

 drift and in the Ossiferous fissures are always of the same and not 

 of different ages (except whei'e cavities have been used as 

 newer bone caves), and are never mixed with neolithic remains. 

 It is true that Hippopotami are good swimmers in rivers, but 

 overwhelmed as they were in the rising sea waters, and crowded 

 together in a breaking surf, they must have succumbed. 



Professor Hull will iind in the foregoing pages, but more par- 

 ticularly in the paper read before th-e Royal Society, reasons, too 

 long to repeat here, to account for the entire absence of marine 

 shells in the Ossiferous fissures or in the other forms of the Rubble- 

 drift (Phil. Trans, for 1893, p. 981). 



Pi'ofessor Prestwich assures Mr. Allen Brown that he has not 

 overlooked the causes to which he refers, but these mostly refer to 

 an anterior period, and would be inadequate to explain the special 

 phenomena of the Rubble-drift. 



The Rev. J. M. Mello will find in the Bull. Soc. Geol. de France, 

 3-Ser. vol. iv, p. 692, a statement by M. de Rosemont on the 

 agency of rain in connection with the Ossiferous fissure of San- 

 tenay, while the objections of the author, who considers the pluvial 

 origin inadmissible, are given in the Phil. Trans, for 1893, p. 938. 

 Without more minute description, he could not say whether the 

 deposits of the Var and Rhone referred to belong to the Rubble- 

 dritt. It is possible they may. Professor Prestwich would by no 

 means limit the area of Submergence to that embraced by him, 

 but he only at present carries it so far as the geological evidence 



