confirmation" of Deucalion's flood. It has not yet ceased to be in
vogue, apparently because those who entertain it are not aware that
modern geological investigation has conclusively proved that the gorge
of the Penens is as typical an example of a valley of erosion as any to
be seen in Auvergne or in Colorado. [13]

Thus, in the immediate vicinity of the vast expanse of country which can
be proved to have been untouched by any catastrophe before, during, and
since the "glacial epoch," lie the great areas of the AEgean and the
Red Sea, in which, during or since the glacial epoch, changes of the
relative positions of land and sea have taken place, in comparison with
which the submergence of Moel Tryfaen, with all Wales and Scotland to
boot, does not come to much.

What, then, is the relevancy of talk about the "glacial epoch" to the
question of the historical veracity of the narrator of the story of the
Noachian deluge? So far as my knowledge goes, there is not a particle of
evidence that destructive inundations were more common, over the general
surface of the earth, in the glacial epoch than they have been before
or since. No doubt the fringe of an ice-covered region must be always
liable to them; but, if we examine the records of such catastrophes in
historical times, those produced in the deltas of great rivers, or in
lowlands like Holland, by sudden floods, combined with gales of wind or
with unusual tides, far excel all others.

With respect to such inundations as are the consequences of earthquakes,
and other slight movements of the crust of the earth, I have never heard
of anything to show that they were more frequent and severer in the
quaternary or tertiary epochs than they are now. In the discussion
of these, as of all other geological problems, the appeal to needless
catastrophes is born of that impatience of the slow and painful search
after sufficient causes, in the ordinary course of nature, which is a
temptation to all, though only energetic ignorance nowadays completely
succumbs to it.

POSTSCRIPT.

My best thanks are due to Mr. Gladstone for his courteous withdrawal
of one of the statements to which I have thought it needful to take
exception. The familiarity with controversy, to which Mr. Gladstone
alludes, will have accustomed him to the misadventures which arise when,
as sometimes will happen in the heat of fence, the buttons come off the
foils. I trust that any scratch which he may have