42 Finch on the Tertiary Formations, ^c. 



the peaceful villagers, overwhelm houses, trees and forests 

 in their irresistible progress, and many villages marked in 

 the records of the middle ages, have been destroyed by it. 



The same soil produces the same effect, though upon dis- 

 tant continents ; and the upper marine sands of Virginia 

 imitate upon a small scale the devastations committed by 

 their brothers in Guienne. 



At Cape Henry, the sands yearly advance, surround the 

 cottages and light-house, overwhelm gradually a noble for- 

 est, and carry devastation in their train. The description 

 applied by Latrobe to the advance of one of these sands, 

 will apply most faithfully to the progress of the others; and 

 the method adopted to subdue and fix the sands near Bay- 

 onne, and to save the bouses and forests from the deluge 

 of sand, might, we should suppose, be advantageously 

 adopted in Virginia. 



And that system of agriculture which has converted the 

 barren sands of Norfolk into fertile and beautiful farms, 

 might be introduced upon the same formations in America, 

 making some allowance for difference of climate. 



At Staten Island, the sand upon one part of the coast be- 

 gins to overwhelm a grove of white cedar ; and upon some 

 of the hills of Brooklyn opposite New-York, 1 have ob- 

 served the sand gradually carried forward by the wind, and 

 the whole surface of the hill apparently changing its posi- 

 tion. 



7. Diluvial. 



After the production of these regular strata of sand, clay, 

 limestone, &c. came a terrible irruption of water from the 

 north, or north-west, which in many places covered the pre- 

 ceding formations with diluvial gravel, and carried along 

 with it those immense masses of granite, and the older 

 rocks, which attest to the present day the destruction and 

 ruin of a former world. 



Many more instances might be adduced to establish the 

 identity of what has been called the alluvial district in 

 America, with the tertiary formations of England and the 

 continent of Europe ; but the object of the present memoir 

 is merely to draw the attention of Geologists to the subject. 



