190 ALLUVIUM AND DILUVIUM ON EAST COAST OE ENGLAND. 
up from it the teeth and bones of the extinct elephant* and other 
animals, which are peculiar to that formation. 
The term alluvial has, however, been hitherto applied too 
generally, not only to the diluvial and postdiluvial formations I am 
now speaking of, but also to all deposits of whatever era, in the 
regular strata, that have been drifted to their present place by the 
action of water; and when thus used affords no kind of information 
as to the age or relations of the deposit to which it is applied. 
The important distinction I have been drawing between diluvian 
and alluvium is not less remarkable in the lowlands of the estuaries 
of the Thames, the Wash of Lincolnshire, and the Humber, than it is 
in Holland. At the mouths of all these rivers, and of others less 
important, there is a continual gain of new land, by depositions of 
mud and silt, analogous to those which form deltas at the mouth of 
the Rhine, the Po, and the.Nile. On the east coast of England, there 
is also a considerable addition of silt and mud on some parts, which 
is derived from extensive cliffs of diluvial clay and mud, that are con¬ 
tinually cut away by the action of the sea in others. The history of 
deposits of this kind has been so admirably illustrated in M. Cuvier’s 
Theory of the Earth, and the proofs he advances to show that the 
period at which they began to be formed cannot have been exceedingly 
remote are so decisive, that, referring my readers to him for further 
information on this subject, I proceed to consider the evidences of 
diluvial action preceding the commencement of this alluvium, viz. 
* In the Museum at Leyden, there is an immense os innominatum of an elephant, 
three feet six inches long, which was washed up in this manner in 1809, by the inunda¬ 
tion at Leonen, in the district of Betuwe. The head of an elephant three feet ten 
inches long was discovered in a similar manner after an inundation at Heukelum. 
