H. H. Eoicorth— Traces of a Great Post-Glacial Flood. 439 



Mississippi and the Amazon ? Whence could its water be derived ? 

 Whether we adopt the view of Mr. Codrington that it flowed from 

 West to East, or that it included the drainage of the waters of the 

 rivers that now flow into the North Sea, we are met by a stupendous 

 difficulty in postulating a river in the West of Europe 40 or 50 

 miles wide, and, be it remarked, a rapid river ; for if it were a slug- 

 gish river only, it would deposit mud, but not gravel. The fact is that 

 every way we look at the problem when we sift it candidly, we are 

 met by difficulties, inconsistencies, and contradictions, that make it 

 impossible for us to regard the fluviatile theory as admissible. 



If we exclude marine and fluviatile action, where are we to turn 

 for a cause sufficiently patent and competent in other ways to spread 

 the angular gravel as we find it — where are we to turn, but to the 

 cause which we have already postulated so frequently ? This appeal 

 in the case before us is not a new one. It is mei-ely a reversion to 

 the views held before Lyell's influence became so overpowering as 

 to constitute almost a religion. 



Long before I wrote these papers, much more distinguished 

 observers than I can ever hope to become accepted a view more 

 or less in harmony with that here defended, and I shall not 

 scruple to turn to them and to quote them freely. It is the 

 fashion in some places — a fashion which I confess to dislike 

 exceedingly — to minimize as much as possible the work done and 

 the results obtained by those on whose shoulders we stand, because 

 standing there we naturally see further than they did. That there 

 were great men before Agamemnon is a precept which has lost 

 its force among some students of geology. The old men were 

 surely as honest, as keen-sighted, and as well-furnished with keen 

 wits as we are. The evidence they had before them was very 

 much the same as that we have, and it follows that in many cases 

 where fashion has turned elsewhere, it may be prudent to reconsider 

 its steps and to turn once more to their teaching. To call that 

 obsolete which merely trenches on our prejudices, and is not incon- 

 sistent with the facts, is to indulge in mei-e rhetorical word-play. 

 We have no respect whatever for authority as such. But when 

 a man, whose reputation it is the fashion rather to paint in 

 chiaroscuro because he lived before the epoch covered by our im- 

 mediate memories, spoke a great truth, he ought to have credit for 

 it; and we are equally trenching on questionable morals whether we 

 appropriate his discovery or refuse to recognize it because he lived 

 before the days of our own prophet. The older writers no doubt 

 based some of their reasoning on certain postulates which are no 

 longer tenable. No one now Avould dream of suggesting that a 

 Universal deluge or Noacldan flood, such as formed the background to 

 Dr. Buckland's famous treatise, is evidenced by the facts as we know 

 them. We at once brush aside not only this, but all other general 

 postulates as utterly vicious. We hold that to face the facts ham- 

 pered with the postulate of a Universal Deluge is as vicious as to do 

 so hampered with the equally crippling postulate of uniform action 

 in scBcula sceculorum. The facts alone are our masters, and if a 



