Geological Papers. 81 



Lost Atlantis also. The gases generated by volcanic action 

 proved fatal to life. ( Consider the destructive sulphurous gases 

 generated by Vesuvius in one of her eruptive periods, or of 

 Mount Pelee, for example, and then remember that an eruptive 

 period of Vesuvius or of Mount Pelee represents only in 

 miniature the great volcanic fissure eruptions of Pliocene 

 Tertiary and glacial Quarternary times. It is no more, in com- 

 parison with the eruptions of that period, than a single atom 

 in comparison with the volume of the whole earth.) The 

 animals sought shelter in caves and grottoes and in whatever 

 place protection could be found from the hot-ashy-dust-gaseous 

 invader, and there huddled together they perished, and their 

 remains are known to-day as the lime-cavern fossils. In this 

 terrible catastrophe there perished in America the horse, bos, 

 mastodon, camel, elephant, and many of the other then tropical 

 and temperate species which roamed over her plains. In ad- 

 dition to this, many of the animals that had escaped the gas- 

 eous storm were overtaken by the lava flood which followed. 

 A few species, however, migrated to more favorable parts of 

 the earth and in this way preserved their kind. Coincident 

 with the lava eruptions on land there occurred greater erup- 

 tions and disturbances at sea, because the crust mashing was 

 inaugurated beneath the sea; and the sea water was heated by 

 coming in contact with the heated rocks and incandescent 

 lava and the now heated atmosphere, the temperature of 

 which had been raised by coming in contact with the molten 

 lava hurled out on the land surface. The seas were, at least 

 a great deal of them, evaporated. (Mr. Thomas Belt, in the 

 Quarterly Journal of Science, says that the formation of the 

 ice sheets at the poles in the glacial epoch must have lowered 

 the level of the oceans of the world at least two thousand feet. ) 

 The vapors thus formed, having been wafted on high, so to 

 speak, were carried toward the poles, where, on being cooled, 

 they were condensed and fell as snow. Also the volcanic dust 

 hurled by the volcanic explosions beyond our atmosphere, and 

 surrounding the earth as rings of dust, would take up much of 

 the sun's heat before it could reach the solid earth, thus in- 

 < reasing and maintaining the cold. 



This great change was as sudden as was the almost instan- 

 taneous earth-crust disturbances and lava eruption, which was 

 the immediate cause of the excessive evaporation. So sudden, 

 —6 



