CHAP. VI GEOGRAPHICAL A^^D GEOLOGICAL CHANGES 99 



both in England and in many parts of the Continent, could 

 only have been formed in inland seas or lakes, and thus 

 equally demonstrate continental conditions. 



We now pass into the oldest or Palaeozoic formations, 

 but find no diminution in the proofs of continental condi- 

 tions. The Permian formation has a rich flora often pro- 

 ducing coal in England, France, Saxony, Thuringia, Silesia, 

 and Eastern Russia. Coalfields of the same age occur in 

 Ohio in North America. In the still more ancient Carbon- 

 iferous formation we find the most remarkable proofs of the 

 existence of our present land massses at that remote epoch, 

 in the wonderful extension of coal beds in all the known 

 continents. We find them in Ireland, England, and 

 Scotland ; in France, Spain, Belgium, Saxony, Prussia, 

 Bohemia, Hungary, Sweden, Spitzbergen, Siberia, Russia, 

 Greece, Turkey, and Persia ; in many parts of continental 

 India, extensively in China, and in Australia, Tasmania, 

 and New Zealand. In North America there are immense 

 coal fields, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, from Penn- 

 sylvania southward to Alabama, in Indiana and Illinois, 

 in Missouri, and even so far west as Colorado ; and there 

 is also a true coal formation in South Brazil. This wonder- 

 fully wide distribution of coal, implying, as it does, a rich 

 vegetation and extensive land areas, carries back the proof 

 of the persistence and general identity of our continents 

 to a period so remote that none of the higher animal types 

 had probably been developed. But we can go even further 

 back than this, to the preceding Devonian formation, which 

 was almost certainly an inland deposit often containing 

 remains of fresh -water shells, plants, and even insects ; 

 while Professor Ramsay believes that he has found " sun- 

 cracks and rain-pittings " in the Longmynd beds of the 

 still earlier Cambrian formation.^ If now, in addition to 

 the body of evidence here adduced, we take into consider- 

 ation the fresh-water deposits that still remain to be 

 discovered, and those extensive areas Avhere they have 

 been destroyed by denudation or remain deeply covered up 

 by later marine or volcanic formations, we cannot but be 

 struck by the abounding proofs of the permanence of the 

 ^ Physical Geography and Geology of Great Britain, 5tli Ed. p. 61. 



II 2 



