Apparent objections to the Glacial Theory, 291 



waters ; this, however, can only be admitted by supposing that such 

 upheavements have been very slow and gradual in their progress, for 

 a sudden and violent uprise would not only have caused the finer 

 detritus to drain off with the waters, but would likewise have set in 

 motion the larger boulders, and caused them to roll from the uprising 

 ridges down into the valleys below. The violent disruption apparent 

 among the strata of uplifted rocks, and the vertical position many of 

 these strata have attained, afford sufficient evidence of a rapid 

 uprise from the waters, and therefore renders it highly improbable 

 that such boulders were deposited before the upheavement took 

 place, and these facts coupled with the proofs above cited, of 

 former elevated temperature in which icebergs could not have 

 existed, clearly demonstrate that these latter were not the agents by 

 which boulders have been dispersed over the countries of the north. 

 In many instances, as in the Alps, the ranges on which boulders 

 rest, are not more than fifty miles distant from the sites whence they 

 have been torn, and it seems scarcely reasonable to suppose, that 

 at the time when the climate of the central chain of the Alps, (which 

 was then a rocky island,) was cold enough to give origin to icebergs, 

 the temperature at only fifty miles distant was warm enough to 

 melt them again, for as Lyell hypothetically observes, at the time, 

 when the northern hemisphere was an ocean studded with islands, 

 the equatorial regions abounded in land, and the temperature caused 

 by such a distribution was not only totally opposed to the formation 

 of icebergs, but even to the occurrence of any severe cold. 



But if then it be thus shown that diluvial matter, and erratic 

 blocks are not due to the agency of glaciers or of icebergs, what 

 other agent can we employ to distribute them according to their 

 present arrangement ? What, but the mighty, and overwhelming rush 

 of retiring waters, thrown back tumultuously in furious waves 

 towards the south, as the mountainous regions of the northern 

 hemisphere successively burst upwards from beneath the sea ? 

 What other agent save diluvial currents such as these, could have 

 borne off the masses of shattered rocks urged onwards by the 

 double impulse afforded by uprising hills and retiring waters, 

 and strewed the land with detritus decreasing in quantity and in 

 size as we travel towards the southern tracts, where the mighty 



