I@URN SIE OF CEOLOGY 
APRIL-MAY, 1895. 
Wiss, CUASSIMACAIIOIN ONS IVIR OMIT /AUN GIL/ACIUAUE, 
DELOS ELS: 
WHEN the “Superficial Formations” of Europe began to 
attract attention, geologists soon discovered that these could be 
naturally classed under two heads. ‘The lower and therefore the 
older deposits were characterized especially by their confused 
and tumultuous appearance, while the overlying younger forma- 
tions showed a more or less orderly arrangement in layers or 
beds. The confused accumulations of the Jower group were 
generally believed to be the products of some kind of cataclys- 
mic action— perhaps, as some thought, the Noachian Deluge, or, 
according to others, mysterious debacles and waves of transla- 
tion, caused, it was imagined, by titanic disturbances of the 
earth’s crust. By common consent the tumultuous deposits 
came to be known as Diluvium, while the overlying bedded 
accumulations were termed A/uvium, and were attributed to the 
action of water under those normal conditions of the surface that 
now obtain. It is unnecessary to ask why the diluvial explana- 
tion of the drift-phenomena ever commended itself to competent 
observers. Perhaps geologists had not yet quite freed them- 
selves from the influence of their predecessors, whose heroic 
attempts to cut Gordian knots figure so prominently in the early 
literature of the science. One thing is certain that the principal 
advocates of the diluvial doctrine were ignorant of modern 
glacial action, and, with a few notable exceptions, had only the 
VoL. III., No. 3. 241 
