74 
ANTEDILUVIAL CLAY. 
ence before this destroying element wrought its 
effects upon us, since, clay of a dark red colour, 
and even another sort,—white, with intervening 
river gravel, and at one spot an addition of sand, 
from a bed on which the “ diluvium” and its 
animal contents repose, in the Yealm Bridge cave, 
besides other kinds existing in many crevices of lime 
rock apparently inaccessible to diluvial matter, but 
in probable connexion with the shale existing in 
the rock. 
There can be no necessity for searching out 
evidences of extravagantly stupendous force exerted 
by the Flood, when its actual character and extent 
of power appear in the following indications. It 
swept over the lands and earned with it the diluvial 
clay, which it eventually deposited on a great 
proportion of the surface as for the most part a 
shallow stratum. Although it appears on the gener¬ 
ality of hills and elevations, it necessarily subsided 
and accumulated in the vallies and lower portions 
of the country, and, since the vallies are deepest, and 
the ground altogether lowest towards the coast, the 
clay and debris driven by this flood chiefly occur 
at these parts. We are to bear in mind, that this 
flood was not a mere inundation, or simple power 
of mixing the fluid element with the softer and finer 
particles it would encounter, but, that it was in a 
highly agitated state, and capable of acting on the 
grosser and larger bodies lying in a free condition 
on the earth ; accordingly, it rolled trappean, dolo- 
mitic, granitic, and other blocks, after dislocating 
them from their more or less trivial connexion with 
their parent beds down into vallies, and in some 
instances, even in contrary directions to their gra¬ 
vitation. There are spots, where large masses of 
these rocks appear imbedded in sand or diluvial 
clay, separated as it seems from their original site 
at a higher elevation. 
