on the Distrihution of British Animals. 31^ 
Dr Fleming, however, at page 299j speaking of what Mr 
Bald denominates the old alluvial cover,” and many Eng- 
lish mineralogists diluvium,” concludes, that The partial oc- 
currence of these strata, — their limited extent, — ^great difference 
of character in neighbouring districts, — the presence of remains 
of terrestrial animals, — and the absence of marine exuviae, — de- 
monstrate that a universal flood, possessing the velocity some 
have assigned to it, had no share in this formation.” Here again 
we are obliged to differ from Dr Fleming as to matters of fact, 
1 . With respect to the asserted partial occurrence of these 
strata, and their limited extent, I know not what may have been 
his opportunities of locomotion and observation 4 but J dare as- 
sert, that, in the whole course of my own geological travels, from 
Cornwall to Caithness, from Calais to the Carpathians, in Ire- 
land or in Italy, I have scarcely ever gone a mile, without find- 
ing a perpetual succession of deposits of gravel, sand, or loam, 
in situations that cannot be referred to the action of modern 
torrents, rivers, or lakes, or any other existing causes ; and 
with respect to the still more striking diluvial phenomena of 
drifted masses of rocks ; the greater part of the northern hemis- 
phere, from Moscow to the Missisippi, is described by various 
geological travellers as strewed, on its hills as well as valleys, with 
blocks of granite and other rocks of enormous magnitude, which 
have been drifted (mostly in a direction from north to south) 
a distance sometimes of many hundred miles from their native 
bed, across mountains and valleys, lakes and seas, by a force of 
water, which must have possessed a velocity to which nothing 
that occurs in the , actual state of the globe affords the slightest 
parallel. I must therefore deny, that the occurrence of these 
deposits is partial, ur their extent limited. 
% That their character is different in neighbouring districts 
I readily concede ; for it often differs in the same field, and even 
In the same pit or quarry ; as well it may do, considering the 
when animals of the same kind have not yet ceased to nbound in the woods of 
India and the wiMs of Africa, in spite of a farther persecution of nearly two thou- 
sand years ? Surely the theory of their extinction by the savage natives, preced- 
ing the Roman invasion of these countries, is a matter of the highest improbabi- 
lity ; their existence at that time, and subsequent extirpation, is, in the utter si- 
lence of Caesar and Tacitus, and^ all later historians, and even of tradition, a mo- 
,ral impossibility. 
