more recent strata plainly show that from fire 

 toes it has gradually reduced the number to tbe 

 present single hoof .and is an animal highly adapted 

 for speed. 



TheOligocene beds are very sparse in thiscoimtry^ 

 but show in Hampshire and in the Isle of Wight, 

 where they are chiefly marls and limestone, and 

 may run 600 ft. in depth. In Paris and in Switzer- 

 land they are much deeper and have built up the 

 Bigbi in tbe Alps. 



The Miocene beds are altogether wanting in 

 Britain, though of course volcanic rocks were laid 

 down during this period, as in every period.scarcely 

 without intermission. It is almost certain that at 

 this period England was lifted above water by the 

 same movement which raised the Alps and the 

 table land of Spain. Three hundred species of 

 shells belonging to this system have been found 

 in the Touraine district of France, the deposit is 

 about 50 ft. thick, and tells of a strait right across 

 France. Another strait connected the Mediter- 

 ranean Sea with the Atlantic, for on the now high 

 ground of the Spanish Table Land are found the 

 bones of whales, which passed freely from sea to 

 sea along the strait. The climate must still be 

 tropical, as is evidenced not only by the remains 

 of vegetation, but by the shells. 



The following period, known as the Pliocene, 

 brought tremendous changes in land and water 

 and in climate, too, and it is in the rec;:>rds laid 

 down in this period that the first scanty fragments 

 of the skeleton of man are found. In Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, and Essex are best seen the few rocks of 

 this system, and Coralline Crag — a kind of shelly 

 limestone — is a very good representative rock. 

 Remains of man are not only found in Europe, 

 but in the Pliocene gravels of California, so that 

 if man first saw the light in India or tbe Malay 

 region, time must be allowed for dispersion to 

 California. It is now that the temperature de- 

 clines, and snow and ice prevail and cover the 

 whole of the Northern Hemisphere ; glacial action 

 swept away the Northern flora, never to return, 

 the huge mammals perished, the sea monsters 

 were either driven southward, or left to perish in 

 the cold. The rocka of Ireland, Scotland, and 

 England bear unmistakeable evidences of the 

 path of the ice sheets and glaciers, grooved, 

 smoothed, and polished by the enormous weight 

 of moving ice above them. In Scotland it was 

 very probably a mile thick, and this ice cap 

 reached as far south as London and Bristol. The 

 detritus is chiefly boulder clay, more or less 

 charged with stones of every size, and for 3,000 

 miles across America it is so evident in continuous 

 mounds and ridges that the Ameiican geologists 

 call it the "Terminal Moraine." During this pro- 

 longed period of intense cold, there were intervals 

 of warmer climate, when plants and animals of 

 southern lands lived and thrived, but were shortly 

 overcome by the return of Arctic cold. By slow 

 degrees the snow and ice vanished, and the tem- 

 perature increased to pretty much what it is to- 

 day. 



Quaternary — Past - Tertiary — Pleistocene are 

 terms used to express all tbe deposits of locks 

 laid down since the Tertiary epoch. The ice 

 torced and dragged and pushed great blocks of 



stone hundreds of miles from their native ruck ; it 

 scraped the summits of exposed rocks, decayed to 

 the state of clay by rain and sun and wind, and 

 thus combined, in a forced march of enormous dis- 

 tances, and under the appalling pressure of the 

 weight of a mile or more of ice, produced the 

 boulder clay or till. On this are formed tbe sands 

 and gravels which accumulated in inter-glacial 

 periods, to be succeeded by another mass of boul- 

 der clay. 



As all later deposits are characterised by the 

 presence of the remains of man, or his works, they 

 are classified as the PalxoUthic (or Old Stone 

 AgQ, chipped flints) and Neolithic (or New Stone 

 Age, polished flints). Tbe rudely-chipped flints 

 are found in gravels 100 feet above the present 

 river levels, and from that, to within a few feet of 

 the present river level, but within ten feet of 

 present levels, the polished stone implements are 

 found, indicating a distinct advance in the art of 

 working stone. The Bronze Age followed and 

 overlaps the most ancient known history of Egypt 

 and Babylon ; rude weapons of iron soon came into 

 use, so that at this point geology ceases and history 

 begins. 



Epoch. System. Typical Fossils_ 



Quater- ( Recent 



nary I Pleistocene and Glacial 

 Tertiary /"Pliocene 

 or } Miocene 

 Caino- 1 Oligocene 

 zoic (.Eocene 

 Second- f Cretaceous 

 ary or < Jurassic or Oolitic ... 

 Mesozoic C Triassic 

 f Permian 



Primary 

 or 



Pal 890- 



zoica 



Unstra- 

 tified 



Carboniferous 

 Devonian 

 Silurian 

 Cambrian 



Laarentian 



L 



^ Metamorphic 

 < Igneous 

 t Igneous 



Irish Elk. 

 Mastodon. 

 Conifer. 

 Univalve. 

 Nummulite. 

 Ammonite. 

 Bivalve. 

 Ichthyosaurus 

 Lampshell, 

 Club Moss. 

 Ginoid. 

 Trilobite. 

 Seaweed. 

 Eozoon Cana- 

 [dense. 

 Azoic. 

 Azoic. 

 Azoic. 



Heat. — The crust of the earth is like a cool 

 envelope, surrounding a very hot interior. Although 

 this heat is now independent of the sun and very 

 intense, if it were not for the imported continual 

 supply from the sun, this globe would soon be 

 wrapped in a winding sheet of ice, for the simple 

 reason that the internal heat is always escaping 

 through volcano and earthquake. Tbe smaller the 

 body, the sooner is heat lost ; the moon's dead 

 b&rren surface shows what tbe earth may become, 

 and, in time, the sun himself. The history of one 

 is the history of all. It is owing to the cooling and 

 consequent shrinking of the earth, that the crust 

 has been caused to break and crumble into hill and 

 dale. 



Wells and Mines ; Lava. — In sinking wells, pit 

 shafts, etc., it is found that 50ft below the surface, 

 the tempprature stands at 50 degrees, and this, 

 all the world over, summer and winter ; we call it 

 *' equable temperature." As we descend, for 

 every 51 feet the temperature increases one degree. 



