H. H. Howorth—A Great Post-Glacial Flood. 415 
of the present drainage systems, make it probable that since their 
formation the denuded gravels from the northern areas have been 
swept into and mixed with the gravels further south, and their place 
in the north has been occupied by the barren gravels which have 
come down from the mountain districts of Cumbria, and which were 
doubtless largely untenanted by the fauna which so abounded on 
the fertile plains. 
Let us now inquire into the lessons furnished by the rolled gravels 
containing mammalian bones and paleeolithic implements. In the 
first place the notion that they are fluviatile is based on a very small 
induction. Mr. Flower well says: “As long as it was believed 
that the implement-bearing gravels were never found except on or 
very near to the banks of rivers, it was reasonable to attribute to 
those rivers the transport of the gravel in which they were im- 
bedded; but from more recent observations, both in England and 
France, it seems evident that the implement-bearing gravels, as well 
as others of the same character which are not yet known to contain 
implements, do occur in localities so far removed from existing 
rivers, and when found near rivers at such elevations as almost to 
preclude the belief that those rivers, however swollen by excessive 
rainfall or melting snow or otherwise, could have at all affected their 
condition” (Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxv. p. 458). Again he says: 
««T may notice that flint implement-bearing gravels have lately been 
observed in several other localities, on table-lands and hills far 
removed from any existing river and destitute also of the slightest 
trace of any ancient river” (id. 459). Again, Mr. Flower, speaking 
of the implement deposit at Brandon, says, “It occurs at an elevation 
of from 80 to 90 feet above that at Broomhill, which is two miles 
higher up the stream, and about the same above Shrubhill, which is 
several miles lower down. Yet notwithstanding this great difference 
in the levels, we have strong if not unmistakable indications, derived 
in some measure from the implements themselves, that all these 
deposits were (geologically) contemporaneous. The implements in 
each are substantially of the same age and character; the matrix of 
red gravel in which they rest is of the same composition; the beds 
rest directly upon the eroded surface of the Chalk or the Gault, and 
are more or less overlain by sands of the same description. But it 
is incredible that such deposits (if of the same age) should owe 
their origin to one and the same river; for if so, in order to reach 
the higher level, it must have been swollen to the height of 100 feet 
above the level at Broomhill and Shrubhill, and extending three miles 
to the south. This would require a volume of water of dimensions 
and power several thousandfold greater than those of the present river ; 
and to supply such a stream, the basin from which the river is fed 
(occupying as it does an area of not more than 800 square miles) is 
altogether insufficient; nor, indeed, would the present contour of 
the country allow such a river to flow in that direction.” 
Again, as he urges, if the fluviatile theory be correct, in order to 
account for the Brandon and Lakenheath deposits, “‘ we must suppose 
that this river overflowed at a height of at least 100 feet above the 
