19 



height is 15,000 to Itj.OOO feet, while some peats 

 are very much higher. Therefore, a zone of very 

 violent mntion pushed up the Andes four feet. 

 while the Ptimpas, where the upheaval was not so 

 violent, was only upheaved one foot, and the 

 plains on the shores ot the Atlantic one inch. In 

 Europe, the land in Norway (North Cape) is said 

 to be upheaved five feet per century, which 

 gradually diminishes towards South, at first afoot, 

 and ihen at Stockholm to three inches per century. 

 These graHual upheavals and submergencies are 

 »lway= tHking plac«, so that the contour and coast 

 line of continents are always changing. That part 

 which 18 now the British Isles has been partly 

 or wholly submerged beneath the ocean some 

 twenty-five different times ; hence we have so 

 many diffe-rent strata, each marking a separate 

 epoch and writing, as it were, its records in the 

 now existing rocks, which are the outcome of those 

 submergencies or the material deposited during 

 those periods. 



Time will not permit us to go right through the 

 different geological periods, so I will take perhaps 

 a few of the most interesting. The climate during 

 the carboniferous or coal peiiod was probably like 

 a humid hot-house Dense forests ot rank vege- 

 tation overspread the marshy soil, intersected by 

 rivers, lakes, and swamps, choked with the trailing 

 roots of the huge stigmaria. and other aquatic and 

 succulent plants, while all around luxuriant ferns 

 and gigantic reeds spread forth their foliage with 

 inconceivable rapidity, until the soft and pulpy 

 stems sank beneath their own weight and succes- 

 sive forests sprang up from their prostrate and 

 Compressed trunks. At last the old land surface 

 commenced slowly to sink beneath the sea, and 

 the once verdant plains were gradually covered by 

 the water of the ocean. The roof of the coal thus 

 represeots the first accumulation of sediment 

 deposited upon the coal bed, and we can readily 

 understand how it should be so rich in the stems 

 and fronds of ferns and other plants, and how it 

 should often h** traversed by the upright trunks of 

 trees. In this way, then, we can explain the 

 method in which a single bed of coal is formed, 

 but in a coal-field there may be fifty to a hundred 

 seams of coal lying one above the other, and 

 separated by intervening beds of clay and sand. 

 In this ease, the old land was again raised above 

 the level of the sea by one of those movements to 

 which the crust of the earth has so often been 

 subjected Soon, a vegetation as rank and luxuriant 

 as its predecessor, fiourished on the newly-born 

 plain, and vegetable matter was again accumulated 

 throughout a long period of time. Again, another 

 submergence would take place and sand and mud 

 were once more deposited over the vegetable ifeoris 

 of centuries ; this would form another seam and 

 by a repetition of these movements of elevation 

 and depression, any required number of coal seams 

 are formed. 



There are nearly three thousand distinct 

 species of aquatic animals, whose fossils are 

 found in the chalk, which are now only met 

 with in the sea. It must have taken many 

 hundred thousand years for such a vast quantity 

 of chalk to have accumulated to such an im- 

 -mense thickness as we find it round our coasts. 



while some places inland it reaches 1,000 feet in 

 thickness, so it is certain that alt countries where 

 chalk is found, viz , S.E. of England, France, Ger- 

 many, Russia, Poland, Arabia, Syria, and Egypt, 

 were once more or less covered by a deep sea. 

 In process of time this vast ocean bed was 

 gradually upheaved, and that part which after- 

 wards formed England, which then formed 

 part of a large continent, became covered with 

 luxuriant forest, in which roamed elephants, lions, 

 bears, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and other 

 wild beasts. The climate was probably tropical, 

 while that of the southern hemisphere would be 

 glacial. The boles of some of the trees found are 

 from two to three feet in diameter, so it is clear 

 that the dry land formed remained in the 

 same condition for long ages. This stratum 

 of forest bed, as it is called, also contains 

 the stumps of fir trees with their cones, hazel 

 bushes with their nuts, also the stools of oak and 

 yew treet). This proves that the chalk was raised 

 up and remained dry land, until it was covered 

 with forests and stocked with big game ; the evi- 

 dence of their fossils prove that beyond doubt. 

 How long it remained in this condition cannot be 

 said. Another immense change takes place owing 

 to subterranean movements. That dry land, with 

 the bones and teeth of long-lived elephants hidden 

 away amongst the roots and leaves of its ancient 

 trees, sank gradually until it became again covered 

 with the fcea ; in about ln,.jOO years the Northern 

 Hemisphere would became glacial and the Southern 

 Hemisphere temperate. Therefore, as Arctic con- 

 ditions gradually came about, great icebergs were 

 floated away from the North, bearing with them 

 rocks and clay from some Arctic continent, and 

 probably from mountains which are now under 

 the sea. As the icebergs melted, this was deposited 

 on the sea bottom, covering up the remains of the 

 submerged forests with huge masses of drift or 

 boulder clay. Sea beasts, such as the walrus (now 

 restricted to the extreme north), paddled about, 

 as is proved by their fossil remains in the boulder 

 clay. This state of things must have extended over 

 a very long period of time, as the thickness of the 

 boulder clay testifies, but at length this came to an 

 end. Another great upheaval takes place, the sea 

 bed became dry land, and the glacial mud hardened 

 into soil, which can be seen in Norfolk and 

 other counties. The glacial period passed away 

 and a more temperate climate takes its place. 

 Forests again grew, and the wolf and beaver and 

 other modern animals replaced the elephant, etc , 

 and at length conditions prevailed as at present. 

 Thus the British Isles, from the time of the chalk 

 to the present day, has been the theatre of a series 

 of changes as vast in their amount as they were 

 slow in their progress. The area on which we 

 stand has been first sea and then land for at least 

 a dozen times and probably more, and has remain- 

 ed in each of these conditions for a period of 

 great length. These wonderful metamorphoses 

 of sea into land and land into sea have not been 

 confined to one area of England alone. During the 

 chalk or cretaceous epoch, not one of the present 

 great physical features of the globe was in exist- 

 ence. Our great mountain ranges — Pyrenees, 

 Alps, Himalayas, Andes — have all been upheaved 



