E. H. Hoioorth—A Great Post-Olacial Flood. 421 



and then suddenly and completely drained by the breaking away of 

 the ice dam, causing an enormous flood or debacle " (Journ. Geol. 

 Soc. xxxii. p. 84). In order to complete the boundaries of his lake, 

 ]\Ir. Belt elsewhere postulates that Behrings Straits was occupied by 

 another ice belt, while the communication between the Mediterranean 

 and the Black Sea was not then cut, and he urges that by the 

 p-orofino- of the rivers the waters rose all over Northern Asia and 

 Europe, thus drowning the big Mammals, and when the ice barrier 

 broke, the European lake discharged itself in a torrential fashion, and 

 thus distributed the loose surface deposits of Europe as we now find 

 them. This is assuredly a very bold hypothesis. If we try to 

 realize the conditions of climate that would be necessary before the 

 Bay of Biscay could be gorged with ice, or before ice on any great 

 scale could' exist in the sea in the latitude of the Pyrenees, while a 

 temperate climate existed on the land, we shall measure some of the 

 diificulties of such a theory. How could Hippopotami and Fig-trees 

 exist in Northern France with such a mass of ice close by, that the 

 sea must have had a temperature like that of the Pala30crystic sea ? 



The short European rivers would, with such conditions, be 

 permanently frozen, as would the waters of a European lake, 

 formed by their being pounded back. Eain falling on the frozen 

 ground would itself immediately freeze. To introduce the present 

 conditions of Siberia into Western Europe when the Mammoth lived 

 here, would be a trial to our faith ; but to introduce those of Smith's 

 Sound, and yet to make them coincident with a teeming animal and 

 vegetable life, and a mass of liquid unfrozen fresh water, is indeed 

 beyond all our powers of imagination. 



We can no more credit Mr. Belt's explanation of the cause which 

 distributed the valley terraces than we can one of Swift's imaginative 

 tales. Such a theory is, as we think, at issue with the evidence, 

 especially the evidence of climate furnished by the animal and 

 vegetable remains. It also involves the creation of a lake so 

 deep and vast in extent (for it must have reached to the level of 

 the higher European plateaux where the fine loams are spread out), 

 that we have no parallels with which to compare it, and it involves 

 such a lake remaining unfrozen, although composed of fresh water, 

 while the salt water of the Atlantic was gorged with ice several 

 hundred feet thick, and discharging itself along lines, such as the 

 trough of the English Channel, where, so far as we know, there 

 are no appreciable traces of the great masses of debris there ought 

 to be. Such a flood would sweep the land of the greater part of 

 its soft mantle, while the flood required by the facts is one that 

 spread such a mantle over the higher ground and thrust it into 

 the heads of the lateral valleys, as we find it there. 



But apart from this altogether, Mr. Belt's ice dam is a barrier 

 apparently incompetent to prevent such a vast lake from draining 

 unless it was of an entirely difi'erent nature to ice dams elsewhere. 

 As Prof. J. D. Dana says, " There is no such damming as far as is 

 known, about Greenland, the subglacial streams being large and 

 flowing freely to the sea ; and hence the practicability of damming 



