DILUVIAL GRAVEL IN FRANCE. 
211 
PROOFS OF DILUVIAL ACTION ON THE CONTINENT. 
M. Cuvier and Brongniart, in their Geological Map of the Basin 
of Paris, show that the actual form and position of many of the hills 
in this district, especially on the side of Fontainbleau, where they 
stand insulated, and in rows parallel to the main direction of the 
valley of the Seine, can only be referred to the denuding force of a 
transient mass of waters. To the same waters must be referred also 
the pebbles of granite, and other distant primitive rocks that occur in 
this same neighbourhood, mixed with the wreck of the adjacent hills; 
and I must again refer my readers to M. Brongniart’s excellent 
treatise on the natural history of water, in the 14th vol. of the Dic- 
tionnaire des Sciences Naturelles, for further and abundant evidence 
of a violent deluge having produced the actual form of the hills and 
valleys, and superficial deposits of loam and gravel that occur in France. 
In Buffon’s History of the Epochs of Nature*, we find his description 
also of the state of the valleys in France, and of their forms, as derived 
from the excavating force of a mass of waters, to be in perfect har¬ 
mony with those of the other authors I have been just quoting. 
In Italy M. Brongniart has described the summit of the Superga, 
near Turin, to be covered with blocks of serpentine, and accu- 
* Vol. XII. p. 159, Deux Pont edit. 1782. 
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