ISO The American Geologist. September, 1893 
the operation of a great diluvial catastrophe — a mighty flood 
of water which was alone capable of shifting and laying down 
the drift-beds. We cannot go at length into the arguments 
used in support of this opinion. It must suffice to say that 
in our opinion they will have but little weight with geologists, 
especially in America where the evidence on the other side is 
perhaps much stronger than in Europe, The attempt to ap- 
ply the investigations of Scott. Russell, Hopkins, and Whewell, 
etc, on the form of waves is scarcely allowable. Nor is the 
testimony of geologists always quoted in the sense which the 
authors intended. Dana's ''Connecticut River Flood,' 1 for 
instance, cannot be logically pressed to imply the transport 
of the drift of the midland states by water. Allowing full 
scope for floods of terrible force and duration during the Ice 
age, we do not think the writer has made out a sufficient case 
for invoking the aid of so portentous a " Deus ex machina " 
as the well-nigh universal deluge which his interpretation of 
the drift would require. He says that geologists have found 
no adequate cause for their ice, but they can readily retort on 
him with "Tu quoque." We fancy they will be inclined to 
turn the tables and parody his title into the " Diluvial Night- 
mare and the Ice," for so tremendous a catastrophe as he im- 
plies equally well deserves that name. 
In conclusion, we may be peimitted to remark that our 
author closes rather summarily without giving his readers any 
clue to the cause to which he assigns the immense and sudden 
waves that he says distributed the drift. We can, however, in- 
fer from some recent articles of his which have appeared in 
the Geological Magazine, and from a few hints in his preface, 
that he intends to appeal to mighty convulsions the like of 
which in past days appalled the imagination of the early ge- 
ologists. 
"Presently," he writes "came a tremendous catastrophe the 
cause of which, as 1 have tried to show in the Geological 
Magazine, was the rapid and perhaps sudden upheaval of some 
of the largest mountain chains in the world, accompanied prob- 
ably by great subsidences of land elsewhere."' 
Sir Henry will allow us to remind him that it is too late in 
t he day for the most earnest and conscientious opponent of 
uniformitarianism to advocate the old and lost cause of ex- 
