318 Prof. Buckland’s Reply to Dr Flemings Remarks 
a horny consistence, which no sword or other weapon could 
penetrate 
Dr Fleming will, I am sure, excuse me if I suggest to him, 
that the tone of levity in which he speaks of the facts established 
by the evidence of the den at Kirkdale, as a parallel case to the 
fables of travellers who have pretended to discover the decayed 
timbers of the Ark, is not the most appropriate to a discussion 
of the nature now before us. 
Appendix . — Since this article was sent to the editor, Dr Fle- 
ming has published a second paper, in No. XXIII. of this Jour- 
nal, in which he proposes to explain the universal dispersion of 
diluvial deposits by the bursting, at different periods, of an almost 
universal series of lakes. Had such lakes ever existed, it may 
fairly be asked. Where are the traces of their ancient locality ? 
It is evident from the terraces, or parallel roads, in the valleys of 
Glen Boy, Glen Gloy, and Glen Spean, and some three or four 
more, which are all that have hitherto been noticed on the sur- 
face of the whole earth, that wherever such lakes have burst 
their ancient barriers, they have left behind them, in these ter- 
races, evidence that shews the amount of their former extent 
and successive depressions. Even river-floods, of any magni- 
tude, produce a similar effect, and form terraces in the adjacent 
gravel-beds that mark the line of their highest inundations, as I 
have stated, in a note at page 217, first edition, of my Reliquia, 
Diluviante. Is it not, then, utterly impossible that such an uni- 
versal system of lakes as Dr Fleming’s hypothesis assumes, 
could ever have existed, without leaving on their banks similar 
terraces to those of Glen Roy, Glen Gloy, and Glen Spean ? 
Not one example, however, of such a terrace occurs in England, 
a country that is half covered with diluvial gravel. Neither, I 
believe, are there any other lacustrine terraces in Scotland, but 
those just mentioned, although river terraces are very common. 
Until, therefore, such lacustrine terraces are found to be of 
nearly universal occurrence on the sides of upland valleys, we 
remain without a particle of evidence that such lakes have either 
Vide Weber’s Northern Romances, p. 172 . 
