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.
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