228 E. E. Eoicorlh—A Great Post- Glacial Flood. 



large portions of the soft loams, and such a flood is what we in 

 fact invoke. But let us turn to the upper stratum, and see what a 

 consistent and overwhelming story it has to tell. As I have said, 

 this upper layer in France and Belgium, where it is known as 

 diluvium rouge and Limon des plateaux, is spread over the whole 

 country from the bottoms of the valleys right over the plateaux, 

 independent of the local drainage of the district. It is very widely 

 distributed in France and Spain, and sometimes, like the Loess, 

 is found in deposits of considerable thickness. It has been found 

 overlying the sands of the Landes near Bordeaux, and also in the 

 neighbom-hood of Madrid, in Spain, and extending over the plateau 

 of New Castile. It is found at heights varying from 40 metres, near 

 Paris, to 660 metres near Madrid. Elsewhere it is also found at 

 great heights. M. Tardy tells us he met with it in 1871 on the Col del' 

 Eremo, on the colline of Turni, at a height of 600 feet. After-- 

 wards he met with it on the high plateaux between le Puy and Meude, 

 and between the latter village and Saint Flour, at points 800 metres 

 high. He tells us further that it contained pebbles with their 

 edges rubbed. This widely-distributed deposit, occurring thus on 

 high ground far beyond the reach of any possible fluviatile action, 

 apart altogether from the river drainage of the country, can surely 

 only be accounted for, like the similar occurrence of the Loess, by 

 a huge diluvial flow of waters. There is no pretence for invoking 

 marine action, for there are no marine remains, and the French 

 geologists who have examined the problem have been compelled to 

 accept this explanation. This view explains at once why we should 

 find diluvium containing no lime spread over large districts where 

 limestone is the prevailing rock, and where that element would 

 undoubtedly have been markedly present if the deposit had been 

 indigenous, and the product of disintegration of the subjacent strata 

 by fluviatile or other action, and not transported bodily by a strong 

 flood from another district. Such a flood accounts for the rolling of 

 the pebbles occurring in the diluvium rouge. It accounts again for the 

 marked absence of any but traces of the bones of the big mammals 

 in it. On the higher ground their carcases would be swept along 

 into the lower ground in the valleys, while the flood would make 

 a clean sweep of them from the plateaux, and deposit them below 

 as it deposited the larger boulders. 



Let us now turn to the conclusions drawn from these facts by the 

 continental geologists who have examined them so minutely on the 

 spot. M. Belgrand, the well-known author of " La Seine aux ages 

 ante-historiques," has written a great deal on the subject. In a 

 notice of his scientific work inserted by M. Alexis Delain in the 

 8th volume of the 3rd series of the Bulletin of the French Geolo- 

 gical Society, pages Ixv-lxxix, there is condensed for us the result 

 of his researches, which is very interesting in view of the contro- 

 versy raised in these papers. He goes deliberately through a 

 number of forcible reasons why the conditions can only be explained 

 by the jDredicate of a huge diluvial movement, which he expressly 

 styles " unique et violent." The passages are too long to quote, but 



