HA. H. Howorth—A Great Post-Glacial Flood. 421 
cially where the district is most level, there is a continuous stretch 
of pure sand, sometimes very fine, without gravel or pebbles, and 
identical with the sand which accumulates on the coasts of granitic 
regions. In these provinces as well as in Lapland, and on the 
borders of Norway, we may travel for many leagues over horizontal 
beds of fine sand, sometimes containing boulders and sometimes 
having them on their surface.” In regard to this sand we can make 
a curious induction which it is not possible to make in many parts of 
Britain from the very broken and diverse character of the subjacent 
strata here. In England we cannot well ascertain the exact pro- 
venance of the sands, but in Northern Sweden we may be sure that 
it has been derived from the disintegration of the granite and gneiss 
which occupies so much of its surface. Now it is curious that this 
Swedish sand should, as M. Durocher says, be so singularly quartzose. 
It contains some grains of felspar and small bits of mica; but these 
latter are in very small quantities, relative to the quartz and much 
less abundant than in sands which have resulted simply from the 
disintegration of granite or gneiss, and which have not been sifted by 
water (Bull. Soc. Geol. de France, vol. iii. p. 81). | 
This is assuredly unmistakable proof that ice neither in the form 
of land-ice or icebergs had to do with the distributing of the sands 
of Northern Sweden. As M. Durocher says, the immense deposits 
of sand in Helsingland and Jemtland are unmistakably due to the 
action of water. Again, if this water had been the sea, and the 
cause of its presence there mere submergence, we should assuredly 
have found marine débris in them very largely, whereas they do not 
occur in the more northern of these districts, nor are these traces of 
marine débris found at a higher level than 200 métres, their presence 
there being explained as we explained them in the previous paper ; 
but the barren sands occur, says M. Durocher, at a height of 1000 
meétres above the sea-level, and as he justly remarks it follows that if 
deposited by the sea, it could only have been by an abrupt movement 
of the strata up and down, which would be a vera causa for such a 
flood as we are arguing in favour of. These sands in Sweden, and 
also in Norway where they likewise occur, like similar sands in 
England, are closely connected with the more patent erratic deposits 
the transported gravels, etc. Sometimes, as here, they occur with 
intercalated beds of rolled gravel, the surfaces where they jom being 
most irregular in their outline, and causing the beds to thin and 
thicken out, says our observer, “just like the bands of clay, gravel, 
and rolled pebbles of the Tertiary (? Post-Tertiary) deposits of the 
West of France, which have also been formed by diluvial action.” ‘The 
fact of these alternate zones all containing similar erratic blocks 
proves indisputably their approximate contemporaneity. M. Durocher 
has no hesitation in assigning the beds he so well describes to the 
movement of water on a great scale, adding, ‘“‘If the mind finds it 
difficult to realize the extraordinary effects which water in violent 
motion will produce, since we cannot compare its effects with what is 
now passing under our eyes, we must nevertheless accept the action 
of water in this phenomenon as a fundamental postulate, as a conse- 
