270 E. H. Howorth—A Great Post-GIacial Flood. 



Mr. Dawkins in regard to the English beds, and Sir Charles Lyell 

 in regard to the French, argue that this stratum bears unmistakable 

 signs of having been accumulated by the action of ice, which has 

 caught up the various materials of vi^hich it is formed, and deposited 

 them on melting with the utmost irregularity, and they conclude 

 that the climate was in consequence more severe than when the 

 Mammalian remains were deposited (Lyell's Antiquity of Man, 

 Dawkins' Early Man in Britain, p. 139). I am very suspicious 

 indeed, as many other students are, of these alternating periods of 

 extreme cold following one another at intervals, which are so 

 frequently postulated by writers on Post-glacial times ; and am 

 equally suspicious of the constant appeal to the action of ice, which 

 has become the deus ex macMna of current geology. In the case 

 before us the appeal is assuredly not warranted. We must remem- 

 ber that the occurrence of these vertical stones is not an isolated fact 

 at Ilford, but is a feature of the Diluvium of the Somme Yalley and 

 of the Continental Loess, where the evidence of ice is assuredly very 

 problematical. How could ice deposit layers of stones in this 

 vertical way ? If it was ground ice, it would rub them down and 

 break them if they were not on their sides ; while we cannot conceive 

 floating ice — which, if it carries stones at all, carries the rolled stones, 

 which it has ground into kidneys and boulders when still attached 

 to its parent icefield — carrying and de'positing in regular layers stones 

 in vertical fashion in this way. Surely, as in Germany, the proba- 

 bility is that these unweathered stones have largely arisen in situ 

 from the filtration of water charged with carbonate of lime which 

 would naturally deposit concretions exactly in this way, the long 

 axes being in the direction of the flow of filtering water. At all 

 events there does not seem to be any really just ground for attribut- 

 ing the position of such stones to ice action. Putting ice aside, we 

 are bound to conclude that the remarkably irregular, twisted and 

 folded stratum which tops the brick-earth deposits at Ilford, and 

 which is the last stage of that deposit, was due to nothing else than 

 a violent flood of water, which " has caught up the various materials 

 of which it is foi'med, and deposited them with the greatest irregu- 

 larity." We have, in fact, a valuable piece of evidence going to 

 support and strengthen the mass of facts forthcoming from the con- 

 temporary continental deposits, all pointing the same way. In fact, 

 we could hardly have a stronger and more convincing proof of our 

 contention that the period of the Mammoth was terminated by a 

 great diluvial movement. Such a movement seems alone competent to 

 account for a well-known, often quoted, and most interesting section in 

 the Thames Valley, showing the transj)ort, in one lump, of a great mass 

 of Thanet Sands 38 feet in length and 7 feet 10 inches wide, having 

 attached to it a portion of the Woolwich Pebble Bed, and a piece of 

 the Woolwich Shell Bed 12 feet long and 6 feet 5 inches wide. The 

 whole having been bodily removed and enveloped in purple clay. 

 The section is well shown in the interesting paper by Mr. Skertchly 

 (Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxv. p. 88), Mr. Tylor says of this case, 

 " The difiiculty is, to understand what kind of wash of water removed 



