Prior to Charles Lyell's somewhat misguided advocacy of uniformitarianism in the middle 1800s (Baker, 1998b)), it
was common for genetic hypothesizing in natural philosophy to invoke cataclysmic flooding as a mechanism to explain such features as erratic boulders, widespread mantles of boulder clay (so-called “diluvium”), and wind- and water gaps through the ridges of fold mountain ranges (Huggett, 1989). For example, Hitchcock (1835) explained the sediments and landforms of the Connecticut River valley as products of the Noachian deluge