22 FORMATION OF THE EARTH 



depending from it. The back of the bird roughly corresponds 

 to 30 N. lat., its breast to 40 S. lat., and the top of its 

 head to 90 N. lat. The end of its beak was placed 125 E. 

 long, by 55 N. lat. An arm of the sea, comparable to a vast 

 river, separated this continent from the Palaearctic and united 

 the two sides of an immense ocean, occupying and generally 

 exceeding in size the site of the present Pacific Ocean, which 

 seems to have persisted, at least in the form of a girdle round 

 the hypothetical Pacific Continent, through all the geological 

 epochs. The equator cut the body of the bird into two almost 

 equal parts, and the bird covered the whole of the Isthmus of 

 Panama, spreading westwards over Venezuela, Colombia, 

 Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil, and connecting this American 

 portion with Africa, which, together with Arabia, it completely 

 enveloped. It stretched eastwards beyond Madagascar, and 

 to the mouth of the Indus. Spain, the north of Italy, France, 

 the British Isles, nearly all Germany, Finland, and Scandinavia 

 were submerged beneath the waters of the arm of the trans- 

 versal sea behind the neck of the bird which ran along the north 

 coast of Africa and the frontiers of Turkey and Austria, while 

 the head covered the whole of Russia and nearly all China, the 

 forehead and the beak extending obliquely from the Gulf of Obi 

 to the north of Korea. The wattle, contained naturally between 

 the two gulfs, covered India and Indo-China, and united all the 

 islands of the Indian Archipelago, linking one part with, the 

 Asiatic coast and the other with northern Australia. At that 

 time there was neither Atlantic (except for the transversal 

 channel separating the two large continental belts) nor 

 Mediterranean, North Sea, Red Sea, nor Persian Gulf. Chile, 

 Argentina, Patagonia, and all eastern Siberia, including Japan, 

 were submerged. 



The geography just sketched corresponds to what geologists 

 call the Cambrian period ; it succeeded the pre-Cambrian, in 

 which the rocks, afterwards becoming the northern granites 

 and gneisses, were laid down. These granites and gneisses, 

 during this period, formed a primary system of rocks — the 

 Archaean, covered again by the mica-schists and sedimentary 

 sandstone which constitute the Algonkian system. It is in these 

 Algonkian deposits that the first traces of living organisms 

 have been discovered. They are rare, and it is difficult to 

 determine to what forms of life the traces or remains belong ; 



