ALPS AND CARPATHIANS HAVE BEEN UNDER WATER. 221 
PROOFS OF INUNDATION AT HIGH LEVELS. 
It lias been asserted by writers of high authority, and even by 
Cuvier, that the occurrence of the diluvian remains of the larger 
animals is limited to the lower regions and great valleys of the world ; 
and an inference has been drawn, that the waters of the flood, by 
which they perished, did not cover the summits of the higher 
mountains*. 
Against this hypothesis the following facts appear decisive. 1st. 
The blocks of granite, which have been transported from the heights 
of Mont Blanc to the Jura mountains, could not have been moved 
from their parent mountain, which is the highest in Europe, had not 
that mountain been below the level of the water by which they were 
so transported. 
2d. The Alps and Carpathians, and all the other mountain re¬ 
gions I have ever visited in Europe, bear in the form of their com¬ 
ponent hills the same evidence of having been modified by the force 
of water, as do the hills of the lower regions of the earth; and in 
their valleys also, where there was space to afford it a lodgement, I 
have always found diluvial gravel of the same nature and origin with 
that of the plains below, and which can be clearly distinguished from 
the postdiluvian detritus of mountain torrents or rivers. 
* D’ailleurs l’inondation qui les a enfouis ne s’est point elevee au-dessus des grandes 
chains de montagnes, puisque les couches qu’elle a dcposees et qui recouvrent les osse- 
mens ne se trouvent que dans des plaines peu elevees.—Cuvier, vol. i. p. 202 . 
