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rise to some appearance of stratification, or at any rate to a 
sorting of the masses, the heavier parts first subsiding, re- 
course has been had to the theory of a violent rush of water, 
which, from the impetuosity of its course, would hurry on- 
ward in indiscriminate confusion every substance which came 
within its vortex. This has occasioned the use of the term 
diluvial, which has been used by many writers, but it is now 
rapidly giving place to the preferable appellation of drift. 
There are many facts which militate against this theory. 
One fatal objection is, that the blocks have not always taken 
the same direction; for although it appears in general that 
they have a northern origin, which has given rise to the idea 
that the flood must have come from that point, yet this is far 
from being universally the case. Mr. Phillips, who has paid 
much attention to this subject, when describing the dispersion 
of the Shap Fell Granite, notices that at Stainmoor, directly 
east from Shap Fell, granite from Shap Fell and syenitic 
rocks from Carrock Fell have been drifted over the ridge. 
That barrier passed, the blocks are scattered to Darlington, 
Redcar, &c., and they have gone ( south J down the vale of 
York. He then describes the course of the Cumbrian de- 
tritus northward to Brampton, and then eastward down the 
valley of the Tyne, though no streams now flowing there have 
any connection with the mountains from whence the materials 
came. 
It is well known that after the last meeting of the British 
Association at Glasgow, M. Agassiz, in company with Pro- 
fessor Buckland, travelled through part of Scotland, where, 
as well as in the North of England, he detected many proofs 
of the former existence of o^laciers of o^reat extent. The 
large mounds of disturbed materials which abound in many 
of the valleys were pronounced by him to be moraines left by 
retreating glaciers, and in every respect similar to those now 
formed among the Alps. 
