DISCOVERED AT KIRKDALE, IN YORKSHIRE. 
47 
Between these two conflicting opinions we are compelled to make 
our choice: there seems to be no third or intermediate state with 
which both may be compatible. It is not, however, to my present 
purpose to discuss the difficulties that will occur on both sides, till 
the further progress of geological science shall have afforded us more 
ample information as to the structure of our globe, and have supplied 
those data, without which all opinions that can be advanced on the 
subject must be premature, and amount to no more than plausible 
conjecture. At present I am concerned only to establish two im¬ 
portant facts, 1st, that there has been a recent and general inundation 
of the globe; and, 2d, that the animals whose remains are found 
interred in the wreck of that inundation were natives of high north 
latitudes, and not drifted to their present place from equatorial regions 
by the waters that caused their destruction. One thing, however, is 
nearly certain, viz. that if any change of climate has taken place, it 
took place suddenly; for how otherwise could the elephant’s car¬ 
case, found entire in ice at the mouth of the Lena, have been pre¬ 
served from putrefaction till it was frozen up with the waters of the 
then existing ocean? Nor is it less probable that this supposed 
change was contemporaneous with, and produced by, the same cause 
which brought on the inundation. What this cause was, whether a 
change in the inclination in the earth’s axis, or the near approach of 
a comet, or any other cause or combination of causes purely astrono- 
mountains, which, to a certain height, are covered with an abundant herbage, is only 
half a foot thick; it is composed of a mixture of clay, earth, sand, and mould; the ice 
melts gradually beneath it, the carpet falls downwards and continues to thrive; the 
latitude is 66° 15' 36" N .”—Gilberts Annalen, 1831, quoted in the Journal of Science 
and the Arts, No. 37, page 236. 
