266 THE CAUSES WHICH 



date. In Europe, at the period of greatest submergence, the 

 hills of Scandinavia and Britain and the Urals perhaps alone 

 stood out of the sea. In America the Appalachians and the old 

 Laurentian ranges remained above water ; but the Rocky Moun- 

 tains and the Andes were in a great part submerged. A great 

 Cretaceous sea extended from the Appalachians westward to the 

 Pacificj and southward to the Gulf of Mexico, opening probably 

 to the north into the Arctic Ocean. Towards this close of the 

 secondary or Mesozoic period some representatives of the exogens, 

 very like our ordinary forest timber, were introduced. In 

 America a large number of the genera of the modern trees are 

 present, and even some of those now peculiar to America, as the 

 tulip-trees and sweet-gums. 



According to Sir Charles Lyell, at the dawn of the Tertiary 

 period, when the honeyed flowers that deck the maypole first 

 bepaint our land, the southern portion of Europe and Northern 

 Africa formed a large island with deep inlets. These 

 inland waters, as the land emerged from the waves, seem to 

 have given place to extensive swamps, attested by fresh-water 

 strata, which in Provence, Auvergne, Croatia, or the basin of the 

 Rhine, entombed the insect life that animated the existing 

 streams, woodland, or flowery waste. These, curiously enough, 

 prove chiefly of the existing Indian and South African types. 

 Nine species of butterflies have been recovered from such beds of 

 gypsum, marl, and lignite ; and of these a species allied to the 

 south European Thais, one, perhaps, allied to the extra European 

 Neorhia, a " brown butterfly " and " skipper,^^ afford, as shown 

 by Dr. Scudder, tolerable generic characters. The dappled south 

 Asiatic swamp-cricket, Gryllacris, from Radoboj, preserved on 

 the same slab as a piece of floating water-grass ; the brilliant 

 locusts {(Edijjoda), or grasshoppers [Gomphoceri], in one case 

 prettily scattered round a wind-fallen Cenothus leaf from 

 ffiningen ; a Phaneropteron, representing a genus now scattered 

 over the warmer temperate zone of either hemisphere, and others, 

 exemplify the Orthoptera. Some of these retain not only their 

 ancient forms, but also present faded pigment markings. There 

 has also been a wealth of more or less perfectly identified bugs, 

 beetles, bees, and flies recovered from these interesting strata. 

 Generally speaking, the Tertiary plant and animal life 



