71 



volumes, as it wore, ai'e iu the library, but several towards the 

 end of the series have beea removed ; ia other places thoy are 

 coatinuous, but here those geological volumes ai"e abseut that 

 could tell us of the strange thinjjs that wont on whore we now 

 reside, through a period that cannot be estimated by years. 

 Erom the M^ioceue period to the present a greater lapse of time 

 has occurred than that which is represented by the whole of the 

 secondary an<l part of the tertiary strata, from the Trias to the 

 Miocene. (Professor Haughton, Britisli Association, 1878.) A 

 time sufficient to allow of animal species changing from the 

 thick-skinned hog-like type to those more nearly allied to the 

 denizens of our own tropical jungles, and from their remains, 

 found in ot].\er countries, exceeding in size and number, and more 

 remarkable still the variety of their species, the mammalia of 

 the present day. This indeed seems the day of the four-footed 

 things. The vegetable kingdom also rivalled in luxuriance 

 the animil, for the now frozen regions of the arctic lands were 

 then clothed with plants and evergreen shrubs, telling that a 

 warm climate probably prevailed throughout the world, for 

 astronomers do not admit the possibility of the earth's axis 

 having changed. The Numtnultic lime-stone which had been 

 accumulating thi-ough the middle Eocene period reached before 

 its close more than a thousand feet in thickness. When we 

 consider that this like the chalk was the work of formiuifera), 

 it too, is additional evidence of how vast the period, which 

 is represented in Kent by a blank, must have been. Lyell 

 states that six hundred species of shell have been found in the 

 limestone of the Paris basin. Dr. Dawson says the ichthyo- 

 saurus and gigantic lizard fish of the secondary period were 

 rejilaced by the true whale, " thus marking the advent even in 

 the sea of the age of mammals as distinguished from the ago of 

 reptiles." We know not how long great physical changes may 

 have been at work or what time mountain ranges, such as the 

 Alps, the Pyrenees, Carpathians, and Himalayas, may have 

 taken to rise from the bottom of the sea, it may have been 

 through ages of gradual and imperceptible elevation, having its 

 counterpart in the gradual sinking of the floor of the southern 

 ocean, registered by the growth of coral forming the Atols, and 

 Barrier reefs ; or to draw an analogy from our own states of 

 activity and rest, the earth too may have had its periods of short 

 and intense action, and long ones of comparative rejjose. 



The Nummulitic limestone, the work of small, but countless 

 creatures of the sea, was by an elevation of part of the ocean's 

 bottom, towards the close of the Eocene period, cari'ied up to a 

 height of 10,000 feet iu the Ssviss Alps, and in Thibet l'^l3,000 

 feet. This same limestone was largely used iu building the 

 Pyramids ; it occurs at Bagdad, at the mouths of the Indus, 



