306 Prof. Buck land’s Replu to Dr Fleming^ s Remarhs 
versal inundation of the surface of our planetj— -are not suffi-^ 
cieiitlj established. And, 
% He thinks the remains of animals that occur in what I con- 
sider the deposits of this inundation, may be referred to genera 
and species that have gradually perished by local accidents, or 
been extirpated by man. 
To the first of these points I shall offer no other reply than 
to refer him to the distinctions between alluvium and diluvium, 
as stated by Cuvier in the Introduction to his History of the 
Fachydermata, tom. 1. ; the slightest perusal of which cannot, I 
think, fail to convince the reader that it is utterly impossible to 
explain the phenomena which I have called Diluvial, by any 
causes at present in operation. 
I would also refer to the luminous paper of Sir James Hall, 
in the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions, 1813, on the evi- 
dences of an inundation afforded by the Corstorphine Hills, and 
other summits, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh ; and to the 
accurate and practical distinctions drawn by Mr Bald, in the 
third volume of the Wernerian 'Memoirs, p. 123, and fourth 
volume, p. 58., between the old and the new alluvial covers along 
the east coast, and in other parts of Scotland ; and have only to 
add, that my own observations in tliat district, during the last 
summer, enable me to bear testimony to the fidelity of descrip- 
tion both these gentlemen have maintained in the publications 
alluded to. It is needless here to repeat the evidences of dilu- 
vial action afforded by deposits of loam and gravel, in situations 
to which no river could have ever brought them, which I have 
collected in the chapter following p. 185. of the first edition of 
my Reliquiae Diluvianm. I shall deem it sufficient to subjoin 
the following extract from a foreign scientific journal, which 
shews that the distinctions I am contending for, are generally 
admitted by the best observers of the present time. 
“ We believe the best geologists of the day agree in limiting 
the term alluvial, to those deposits which result from causes 
now in action, and in appropriating the term diluvium, to those 
universal deposits of gravel and loam, to the production of 
which no cause at present is adequate, and which can only be 
referred to the waters of a sudden and transient deluge. This 
gravel and loam are always confusedly mixed together, and arc 
