Reliquiae diluvianae; or, observations on the organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and diluvial gravel, and on other geological phenomena, attesting the action of an universal deluge / By the Rev. William Buckland.

  • Buckland, William, 1784-1856.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reliquiae diluvianae; or, observations on the organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and diluvial gravel, and on other geological phenomena, attesting the action of an universal deluge / By the Rev. William Buckland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    our planet at a period antecedent to the last great convulsion that has affected its surface, and affording one of the most complete and satis- factory chains of consistent circumstantial evidence I have ever met with in the course of my geological investigations. As I shall have frequent occasion to make use of the word dilu- vium, it may be necessary to premise, that I apply it to those extensive and general deposits of superficial loam and gravel, which appear to have been produced by the last great convulsion that has affected our planet; and that with regard to the indications afforded by geology of such a convulsion, I entirely coincide with the views of M. Cuvier, in considering them as bearing undeniable evidence of a recent and transient inundation. On these grounds I have felt myself fully justified in applying the epithet diluvial, to the results of this great convulsion; of antediluvial, to the state of things immediately pre- ceding it; and postdiluvial, or alluvial, to that which succeeded it, and has continued to the present time: I forbear to enter in this work into any discussion on the state or circumstances of the animal remains that occur in the solid strata that compose the surface of the earth, as it would be foreign to my immediate object, and as this subject, to- gether with that of the days mentioned in the Mosaic account of the creation, has been already considered in my inaugural lecture published at Oxford in 1820. In detailing the observations I am about to make on Kirkdale, I propose, first, to submit a short account of the geological position and relations of its immediate neighbourhood; to proceed, in the next place, to a description of the cavern itself; then to enter into a par- ticular enumeration of the animal remains inhumed in it, and the very