The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two. VIII. The Literature of Science. § 43. Scrope. George Julius Poulett Scrope, by his studies of volcanic districts in Italy, Sicily and Germany, and especially by his memoir on the volcanoes of central France, and by his observations on the erosion of valleys by rivers, did much to extend and confirm the views of Hutton and Playfair. His remarks, also, on the lamination and cleavage of rocks were highly suggestive; in fact, but for the interruptions of politics, he would have hardly fallen behind his friend Charles Lyell.   116   During the first half of the nineteenth century, the belief in a universal deluge was widely held by geologists. William Buckland, in his Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823), supported his belief by his “Observations on the Organic Remains contained in Caves, Fissures and Diluvial Gravel.” But, both he and Sedgwick, without giving up the view of a universal flood, abandoned, to some extent, the evidence on which, at one time, they had based their belief.   117