353 
He apparently regards the volume of water as being the same then as 
now. 
The Somme River at Amiens is, I believe, some 50 or 60 feet wide, the 
river valley being a mile or a mile and a half wide. The length of the river 
from its head (some ] 2 miles N.E. of St. Quentin) is 124 miles. The fall 
from the source to the mouth is 220 feet, or 1 *77 foot per mile, — about the 
flow of the Thames at Oxford. 
When the excavation, however (according to Professor Hughes’ theory), 
commenced, the river at its mouth at St. Valery ran 140 feet higher than its 
present level at that point, for the plateau there is 140 feet above the sea. 
The fall at that time in the Somme from its source to its mouth was only 
80 feet, or about 8 inches per mile ; that is to say, the Somme river at that 
time had about one-third of the present flow of the Thames above Oxford, 
and about one-half of the flow of the Thames below Oxford. 
The stream, spread at the time over the almost level plateau, must have 
had a depth of less than an inch. 
The course of the river above Amiens to its source, 80 miles, is a winding 
one, which tended still farther to weaken the force of the current. 
I do not comprehend how Professor Hughes deems it possible for such a 
stream to excavate a valley a mile or a mile and a half wide, and 150 to 
200 feet deep. If it be true that man witnessed the commencement of such 
a work of excavation, he is old indeed ; the time since his appearance on 
earth is, in fact, almost incomputable. Professor Hughes indeed points out 
the fact that there has been no change in the valley in two thousand years, 
and we may confidently believe that the present stream will not mate- 
rially augment the excavation in twenty thousand more. 
The upper gravel bed exhibits multitudes of chalk pebbles larger than a 
man’s head, and some few far-travelled boulders of sandstone weighing 
a ton. 
The shallow stream we have spoken of (less than an inch in depth), moving 
by a circuitous course, with a fall of eight inches per mile, is supposed to 
have swept the chalk out of the valley, to have moved and rolled these 
pebbles and boulders, and to have laid down gravel-beds sometimes 20 feet 
thick. 
It is perfectly evident, on the contrary, from the phenomena as exhibited 
in the European river valleys, as well as in those of the United States, that 
these gravels (as well as tfie loess, 20 to 100 feet thick in the United States), 
were deposited by mighty floods, which filled the valleys across their whole 
breadth from hill to bill. 
I have studied these gravels with some attention at Richmond, Virginia, 
where they cover the country to the right and left of the James River for 
miles. Richmond is, at the head of tide, 110 miles from the sea. The 
gravels here are not confined to the valley, but are spread beyond the limits 
of the valley, 150 feet above the present stream, over the level country north 
and south of the river. They were not deposited exclusively in the trough 
