528 
Mr. Buckland on the 
solution of our problem of the origin of two distinct deposits of 
quartzose pebbles, the one in the new red sandstone formation, the 
other in diluvian gravel, they contain a mass of quartz naturally 
divided into minute angular fragments, and these fragments identi- 
cal in substance with, and easily reducible to, the condition of the 
pebbles in question. The same force of water which would tear 
these fragments from their native beds, might, if continued long 
enough, reduce them to their present state of roundness by simple 
attrition, at a period immediately preceding the deposition of the 
new red sandstone. And we have the analogy of rounded frag- 
ments of the older strata of each neighbourhood in other districts 
throughout England, from the conglomerate beds of Devon and 
Somerset, Gloucester and Glamorganshire, to those of Nottingham, 
Yorkshire, and the Valley of Carlisle, to prove the existence of an 
extensive and violent destruction of the earth’s surface by water at 
the period of the deposition of the new red sandstone ; and finally, 
we have the mass of gravel thus buried in the new red sandstone, 
and remaining in it undisturbed during the period of the deposition 
of the succeeding secondary formations, till it was again torn up by 
the water of the last great deluge, and scattered not only over the 
surface of strata composed of the same sandstone, but over almost 
all strata of all ages that occur in England. 
When it happens, as it often does in the central plains of England, 
that masses of diluvian gravel, composed principally of quartzose 
pebbles, lie immediately on the regular sandstone strata containing 
subordinate beds of the same pebbles, it is not always .easy to dis- 
cover to which of these deposits the pebbles ought to be referred, 
the occurrence of a section is usually decisive of this point, and the 
discovery of a single fragment of any rock more recent than the 
new red sandstone, is sufficient to shew the mass to be not referable 
