CHAPTER II 

 Life in Secondary Times 



FN Secondary Times life blossomed in every direction. 

 -*- During the Carboniferous Period the whole of Europe 

 had been slowly but profoundly transformed by the hercynian 

 folding along two main lines of direction : one running north- 

 west to south-east, the other south-west to north-east, crossing 

 each other at a sharp angle in the Central Plateau. Analogous 

 movements took place in the north of Africa, the Altai 

 region, the north of China, the Rocky Mountains, Bolivia, and 

 the basin of the Amazon. In all these areas the once deep 

 valleys where deposits accumulated up to the Dinantian 

 Period were heaved up, and the mountains thus formed 

 have been called the Hercynian Chain. 



At the beginning of Secondary Times, during the 

 Triassic, volcanic eruptions caused by these uprisings were 

 still taking place in the Tyrol, the Pyrenees, Spain, Portugal, 

 Morocco, all around the Pacific, especially in British Columbia, 

 where the debris of volcanic eruption is found over a vast 

 area, the strata often being four thousand metres thick, and 

 in New Caledonia, New Zealand, etc. But in time everything 

 became calm once more and until the beginning of the up- 

 heaval of the Pyrenees — that is to say, for at least four 

 million years — tranquillity reigned almost undisturbed on 

 the earth. No doubt the surface did not remain absolutely 

 stationary. As it has always done and is still doing to-day, 

 even on our coasts, it rose or sank slowly in different places, 

 so that the sea invaded a certain number of coasts in the north 

 and east of Africa, for instance, and formed gulfs in the region 

 of the Jura and the Alps, penetrating even to the heart of the 

 low-lying portions of the continents, which it inundated with 

 shallow expanses of water, temporarily isolating Scandinavia 

 and Finland from the rest of Russia during the Jurassic. These 



