"They are twisted, bent, crumpled, and confused _often in the wildest manner_. Layers of clay, sand, and gravel, which were probably deposited in a nearly horizontal plane, are puckered into folds and sharply curved into vertical positions. I have seen whole beds of sand and clay which had all the appearance of having been pushed forward bodily for some distance the bedding assuming _the most fantastic appearance_. . . . The intercalated beds are everywhere cut through by the overlying 'till,' and [1. "Journal of the Geological Society and Geological Magazine."] {p. 54} large portions have been carried away. . . . They form but a small fraction of the drift-deposits."[1] In the accompanying cut we have one of these sand (_s_) and clay (_c_) patches, embosomed in the "till," _t_1 and _t_2. ### STRATIFIED BEDS IN TILL, LEITHEN WATER, PEEBLESSHIRE, SCOTLAND. And again, the same writer says: "The intercalated beds are remarkable for having yielded an imperfect skull of the great extinct ox (_Bos primigenius_), and remains of the Irish elk or deer, and the horse, together with layers of peaty matter."[2] Several of our foremost scientists see in the phenomena of the Drift the evidences of a cataclysm of some sort. Sir John Lubbock[3] gives the following representation of a section of the Drift at Joinville, France, containing ### SECTION AT JOINVILLE. [1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 149. 2. Ibid., p. 149. 3. "Prehistoric Times," p. 370.] {p. 55} an immense sandstone block, eight feet six inches in length, with a width of two feet eight inches, and a thickness of three feet four inches. Discussing the subject, Mr. Lubbock says: "We must feel that a body of water, with power to move such masses as these, must have been very different from any floods now occurring in those valleys, and might well deserve the name of a _cataclysm_. . . . But a flood which could bring down so great a mass would certainly have swept away the comparatively light and movable gravel below. We can not, therefore, account for the phenomena by aqueous action, because a flood which would deposit the sandstone blocks would remove the underlying gravel, and a flood which would deposit the gravel would not remove the blocks. The _Deus ex machinâ_ has not only been called in most unnecessarily, but when examined turns out to be but an idol, after all." Sir John thinks that floating ice might have dropped these blocks; but then, on the other hand, M. C. d'Orbigny observes that all the fossils found in these beds belong to fresh-water or land animals. The sea has had nothing to do with them. And D'Orbigny thinks the Drift came from cataclysms. M. Boucher de Perthes, the first and most exhaustive investigator of these deposits, has always been of opinion that the drift-gravels of France were deposited by _violent cataclysms_.[1]