160 ON THE REVOLUTIONS 



that the granitic blocks lying in the district between Berlin 

 and the Baltic Sea, occur frequently, and almost constantly, in 

 very numerous assemblages, upon the summits of the sandy 

 hills with which that country is interspersed, whilst none are 

 to be met with in the intervening valleys. That they also 

 abound on the islands of the Baltic ; and these blocks shew 

 themselves upon the beach only in those places where the sea 

 reaches the base of some of the hills on which they lie. 



The present theory affords an easy solution of this fact. In 

 the descending stream, these hills, constituting shallow sand- 

 banks, would afford the first resting place for the floating 

 blocks of ice, which, grounding upon them, would accumulate 

 to very numerous assemblages, and there deposit their grani- 

 tic charge, while all the other similar blocks flowed onwards, 

 in the deep water between *. 



We are thus enabled to give a tolerable account of the gra- 

 nite blocks ; but the formation of valleys, and the excavation 

 of lakes, in particular of the lake of Geneva, remain to be ex- 

 plained. 



* This aid, by which our diluvian wave is so much assisted, can be of no 

 such service to M. de Saussure's hypothesis, as he has originally framed it. He 

 conceives (art. 210, p. 141. vol. i.) that, at a period when the mountains were 

 covered with water, the crust was broken which defended certain caverns then 

 void, and the waters rushing into them with violence, left the mountains in their 

 present state, and, by their retreat, produced the diluvian torrent. It is plain 

 that such a torrent could derive no assistance from the blocks of ice. For when 

 this water, in its previously stagnated state, touched the solid earth, if any 

 blocks of ice were there, they would adhere to that solid mass, and would not be 

 carried off by the retiring waters ; and where this water lay deep upon the solid 

 mass, its ice, if it had any, must have been floating at the surface, and could not 

 be attached to blocks of stone, lying of course at the bottom. 



It is obvious, from the mode in which this topic is introduced by M. de Saus- 

 sure, (which he does, as he expressly says, to meet the impatience of his reader,) 

 that he is not satisfied with it himself, nor can it bear the slightest examina- 

 tion. 



