MARYLAND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 27 



added materially to the observations of Godon other than to show the 

 distribution of the "Alluvial." This paper was re-printed, in substance 

 at least, in various periodicals in 1811, 1817, 1818, and 1826. Maclure's 

 views seem to have attracted considerable attention at the time for they 

 were discussed in 1820 by Hay den in his famous " Geological Essays/' 

 and again by Parker Cleaveland in his treatise on Mineralogy and 

 Geology in 1822. Hay den attempted to show, in his Geological Essays 

 just mentioned, that the " Alluvial " was deposited by a great flood 

 which came down from the north and crossed North America from the 

 northeast to southwest. 



Professor John Finch, an Englishman who happened to be travelling 

 in America at about the time that Hay den and Cleaveland were 

 publishing their views, visited the Coastal Plain of Maryland and 

 collected extensively from the fossil beds in which he took great interest. 

 On returning to Europe he published a most entertaining account of his 

 geological experiences and drew some interesting conclusions based on 

 his field observations. In a publication which appeared in 1824, Pinch 

 took exception to the classification proposed by his predecessors. He 

 believed that the deposits which they had thought to be one, and had 

 grouped under the term " Alluvial " were really more complex. He 

 regarded them as contemporaneous with the Lower Secondary and 

 Tertiary of Europe, Iceland, Egypt, and Hindostan, but he went even 

 further than this and subdivided the " Alluvial " into Ferruginous Sand 

 and Plastic Clay. The Ferruginous Sand corresponds, at least in part, 

 to the Lafayette and Columbia deposits of our present classification. 

 Finch also observed the huge boulders which are so common throughout 

 the Columbia deposits. They confirmed him in the belief that the 

 Ferruginous Sand was deposited during a cataclasmal upheaval by great 

 floods from the north and northwest. His words in this connection are 

 interesting. "After the production of these regular strata of sand, clay, 

 limestone, etc. [Tertiary of Finch, G. B. S.], came a terrible eruption of 

 water from the north or northwest which in many places covered the 

 preceding formations with ( diluvial ' gravel and carried along with it 

 those immense masses of granite and older rocks which attest to the 

 present day the destruction and ruin of a former world." 



