408 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



more extended course of mechanical agencies, produced by long agi- 

 tated waters. 



We must charge to moving waters the undulating appearance of 

 stratified sand and gravel, often observed in many places, and very 

 conspicuously in the plain of New Haven, and in other regions of Con- 

 necticut and New England ; exhibiting frequently, a delicacy of flex- 

 ion, in the layers of gravel and sand, which makes them appear as if 

 they had, but a moment before, received their impulse and position 

 from undulating water, and as if they had copied the very eddies and 

 gyrations of the wave.* 



Bowlder stones, consisting of fragments of primitive rocks, proba- 

 bly from the regions north of the great lakes, are found abundantly 

 on the secondary regions of Ohio, New York and other states ; the 

 fragments of the primitive Alps, on the Jura chain, (the lake of Geneva 

 intervening;) the ruins of the Scandinavian mountains on the seconda- 

 ry and diluvial plains of Prussia and Northern Germany, (the Baltic 

 being between,) and the fragments of the northern counties of Eng- 

 land, cover the southern and middle regions. 



In many cases, bowlders and pebbles can be traced to their native 

 beds, and frequently they are strangers to the regions where they are 

 found. 



Deserts of sand, covering tracts more or less extensive, such as 

 those in South Africa, and in the Zahara, stretching in a vast belt, 

 from the Atlantic ocean to the desert of Lybia ; the sandy plains of 

 Arabia, Germany, and Russia ; the great desert at the foot of the 

 Rocky mountains, and all similar deposits, in situations where no ex- 

 isting causes could leave them, are, with great propriety, referred to 

 diluvial agency. 



Diluvial torrents — lakes — valleys. 



That diluvial torrents had sufficient power to roll even bowlder 

 stones and disjointed columnsf to great distances, or to precipitate 

 them into the valleys, is sufficiently evident, from what we know of 

 the energy of torrents in our own time. 



Beds of sand, gravel, clay, loam, pebbles, and bowlders, are found, 

 as already stated, to compose the loose materials of every country, 



* These strata would probably now be arranged with the tertiary. 



t Such as the columns of trap, sometimes of enormous size, which are found 

 scattered, up and down, through the great Connecticut valley, often at a great dis- 

 tance from their parent ridges. The most remarkable case in this range, is ten 

 miles west of Hartford, on the Albany turnpike. — See Tour to Quebec. 



