DILUVIAL ACTION. 
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gravels in other parts of England and Europe, that they all afford 
additional proofs of the theory of a universal deluge. He considers 
that the conditions of the country before and after this deluge were 
"very similar, but that the great flood suddenly interrupted the life of 
the district and swept away the quadrupeds which had previously 
inhabited it, to which they never afterwards returned, and in this 
way the animals found in the Kirkdale Cave came to an untimely 
end. This opinion was shared by most people of that day, and Mr. 
Greenhough, the President of the Geological Society of London, may 
be quoted as affording an admirable summary of the phenomena con- 
sidered to be derived from this diluvial action. The universal 
diffusion of alluvial sand, gravel, etc., proves that at some time or 
other, an inundation has taken place in all countries, and the 
presence of similar alluvial deposits, both organic and inorganic, in 
neighbouring or distant islands, though consisting often of substances 
foreign to the rocks of which the islands are respectively composed, 
makes it highly probable at least that these deposits are products 
of the same inundation. The universal occurrence of mountains and 
valleys, and the symmetry which pervades their several branches and 
inosculations, are further proofs not only that the deluge has swept 
over every part of the globe, but probably the same deluge." Cuvier, 
in France, who had exhumed immense quantities of animal remains 
in the Paris Basin, held the same opinion, and few scientific men in 
those days ventured to differ from it. 
Professor Phillips, who wrote a treatise on geology for the 
Encyclopoedm Brittanica in the same year as this Society was 
founded, held some advanced opinions as compared with Dr. Buck- 
land, and a quotation from that work will exhibit the difference made 
in the public mind during the fifteen years which had elapsed since 
the publication of Reliquiae Diluvianw : — " Since the time when the 
whole stratified crust of the globe was supposed to have subsided 
from a universal flood of water, the geological effects ascribed to the 
historical deluge and other violent agitations of water have continually 
diminished. It is not many years since we were familiar with the 
doctrine of the excavation of valleys, and the accumulations of 
detritus over large surfaces of the globe being due to diluvial action. 
