132 Proceedings of the British Association. 



and fish living in fresh water, — in water only. The Dean then pro- 

 poses a theory of his own, "to account for every modern discovery." 

 He supposes that the world continued as it was made for nearly two 

 thousand years, — the land, air, and water being all thickly peopled. 

 He then introduces a series of violent convulsions, continuing for 

 several days uninterruptedly, by which all the strata, from the Silurian 

 upwards, were formed. Submarine volcanoes burst through the 

 granitic crust of the earth, and poured their streams of lava into the 

 sea, and torrents of rain descended from the higher lands. The 

 author does not insist on attributing these agencies to natural or 

 supernatural causes. The strata first formed would only contain " a 

 few crawling reptiles, crinoidea, or trilobites ," the second would 

 overwhelm the saurians, who lived on the edge of the waters ; the 

 next, "the heavy animals, who, in the flood that is covering the 

 land, are unable to fly fast enough to the hills" — the megatherium, 

 the didelphys, the pterodactylus, &c. Strata would thus be formed 

 every day, the materials arranging themselves according to their 

 specific gravity. The coal he supposes " to ooze out from the side 

 of the volcano," and the plants in it to have been caught by " the 

 shale thrown up high into the air, and falling with velocity to the 

 bottom, carrying down upon the coal the large leaves of ferns, &c, 

 which it meets with in its descent." The lias fossils were sunk to 

 the bottom by the clay suspended in the turbid waters adhering to 

 them ; and the oolites were formed out of the " purer lime, tossed 

 and rolled about into little balls." " Lastly, the chalk subsides and 

 the sand — but little remains for these to inclose — and little is inclosed 

 within them." In this manner a deluge of but a few weeks' dura- 

 tion would, in the opinion of the Dean of York, produce the whole 

 series of the stratified rocks, and explain every discovery which can- 

 not, he says, be accounted for by the theory of Dr. Buckland. 



Prof. Sedgwick rose to offer some comments on this communica- 

 tion. " But before I proceed to do so," he observed, " I think it right 

 to state a few circumstances respecting the principles on which the 

 association acts, and the motives by which its members are brought 

 together. Our object is, the comparison of facts ; the sifting of them, 

 by kindred spirits meeting together, in the pure love of truth, for the 

 advancement of science, and thus ascending to higher generalizations, 





