S. H. Hotforth — Traces of a Great Post- Glacial Flood. 511 



of England have been under consideration, tlian the relative import- 

 ance of the subject appears to demand ' The peculiar 



situation,' observes Mr. Carne, ' in which nearly all the stream-tin 

 of Cornwall is found, compared with the localities of the most 

 productive tin veins, is highly illustrative of the direction in which 



the current of the deluge swept over the surface Now, on 



looking at the direction which the stream bears from the mines, it 

 will appear most probable that the course of the current, which 

 swept the tin from its original situation, must have been from North 

 to South, or rather from N.N.E. to S.S.E.'— Trans. Geol. Society of 



Cornwall, vol. iv. p. IIU A great mass of detritus seems to 



have been swept into the British Channel from the northward, and 

 this we could scarcely suppose would happen without a great body 

 of water passing downwards to the southwards, carrying before it, 

 when it struck the opposite shores of the British Channel, a large 

 proportion of the disintegrated or decomp)osed surfaces of rock which 

 existed in that direction, transporting them into the chief inequalities, 

 and carrying them down the principal valleys, according to the 

 direction of the minor currents produced by the inequalities of the 

 land beneath " — De la Beche, op. cit. p. 397, etc. 



In 1851 Murchison published his famous essay on the Flint 

 Drift of the South-east of England. In this paper he says, inter 

 alia : " From Petersfield to East Bourn, where the drift becomes for 

 the most part an accumulation of clay or loam, I have nowhere seen 

 it exhibit signs of successive bedding ; but everywhere proofs of its 

 having been accumulated suddenly and tumultuously, whether it be 

 lodged on the Lower Greensand or on the Weald Clay " (Journ. 

 Geol. Soc, vol. vii. p. 355). Again, after discussing the mode of 

 distribution of the angular drift, occurring, as lie says, at such various 

 heights and so completely out of the reach of all rivers ancient and 

 modern, he concludes that it may best be explained by a drift or 

 current acting from west to east, which merged the chalk flints with 

 the debris of the harder beds of the sandstone over which it passed, 

 and translated fragments of chert from the still lower and well- 

 exposed inferior member of the same formation. " This view," says 

 Murchison, " supposes that the movements which fractured the rocks 

 along the western portion of the great anticlinal of the Weald were 

 accompanied by a sudden rush of ivaters" (id. p. 357). 



In explaining how it comes about that in some cases the drift 

 gravel is not found in the valleys, but only in the eroded cavities on 

 the higher ground, he says : " In all these facts I can only recognize 

 the results of an agency of vast intensity, and clear proofs of a great 

 force that drifted the flinty material in this district from west to 



east We may therefore, I repeat, suppose that a current 



translated this debris and swept genei'ally along from west to east, 

 gathering fresh materials from the harder parts of the subsoil over 

 which it passed, and that it traversed promiscuously low hills and 

 dales, in this case, i.e. between West Grinstead and the gorge of the 

 Arun, along the chief line of the existing drainage, but at great 

 heights above its present level. Other facts favour the inference 



