‘ Notice and Review of the Reliqmae Diluvianae. 327 
than to describe under one name gypsum and limestone. 
Some describe alluvium and diluvium as “the old and re- 
cent alluvial covers;” others as “ fluviatile and diluvian 
detritus ;”? and formerly diluvium was called ‘‘ geest.”” In 
Germany, diluvial loam is denominated ‘“ Dammerde,”’ 
and in France, ‘‘ Terrain d’attrissement.”? American ge- 
ologists seem rather slow in adopting these important dis- 
tinctions, although in enquiries like those of Mr. Buckland 
in the work before us, they are clearly indispensable, and 
in every respect essential to accuracy in geological descrip- 
tions. 
Observers, however, every where, we believe, agree that 
such a deposite as diluvium exists. Indeed, who can doubt 
it, when it forms the principal cover of all known countries, 
and meets us at every step? What reflecting man, as he 
observes such immense quantities of rounded pebbles and 
large bowlders, not merely lining the margin of rivers and 
lakes, but spread over the loftiest hills, and often to the 
depth of more than one hundred feet, does not enquire by 
what agency they could have been thus rounded and trans- 
ported to their present situations? It strikes every one that 
all this must have resulted from the agency of running wa- 
ter. But there is a general impression existing, that the 
present streams might have effected it all in the course of 
thousandsofyears. Yetwhoever will attend tothe subject mi- 
nutely, will be satisfied thatthe cause is wholly inadequate to 
the effect. With the exception of a few mountain torrents, 
rivers have very little power to transport even common peb- 
bles any considerable distance—inuch less to carry up to the 
pinnacles of the highest mountains, those huge bowlders 
which we find there insulated. The rock in Horeb, out of 
which Moses with his rod miraculously brought water for the 
Israelites, isa bowlder six yardssquare. The block, out of 
which was hewn the pedestal of the statue of Peter the 
Great, weighs more than one thousand five hundred tons; 
and the Needle Mountain, in Dauphiny, said to be a bowl- 
der, isone thousand paces in circumference, at the bottom, 
and two thousand at the top. Huge rounded blocks of 
granite are found on the top of the Alps, and indeed of al- 
most every mountain hitherto examined. Now how is it 
possible to suppose rivers to have transported them thither, 
to an elevation several thousand feet above the general lev- 
