265 



il) America. The investigations of xAniericans have negatived rather 

 tlian substantiated Süess's conceptions in some respects. J. W. Spenckk *), 

 for instance, came to the conclnsion, chiefly after the study of charts 

 and morphological speculations in connection with them, ihal the 

 Antilles were not the remains of an old cordillera. This reseaicher 

 maintained that the whole tract of the Caribbean Sea, the Antilles 

 and the Gulf of Mexico constituted an ancient continental region, 

 which ever since the Miocene had executed the most stupendous vertical 

 fluctuations of an amplitude of many thousands of meters. R. T. Hill*), 

 however, who visited many of the Antilles, is by no means inclined 

 to consider most of these islands as other than true oceanic formations 

 and refuses to believe that there is any connection between the 

 northern Antilles and Barbados-Trinidad, the latter being by him 

 assigned to the South-America mainland. In his aversion to the 

 assumption of old-sedimentery cores in the Antilles east of Western 

 Cuba he even goes the lengtli of questioning the results of Bergt (I.e.) 

 who had established the occurrence of old schists in Haiti on the 

 basis of simple petrographic work. 



Neither were the long-continued explorations of T. W. Vaughan '), 

 who has contributed so lai-gely to the l^nowledge of the geology of 

 Central America in modern time, based upon the ideas of Sukss, 

 which, as shown above, were of such pregnant significance for 

 many a European explorer. 



Particularly the island of (hiba, where since the Spanish-American 

 war a number of American explorers have been working, seemed 

 to have many features not belonging to the other Antilles. The 

 Spanish mining-engineer Sai,terain already had mistaken a group of 

 sharply folded rocks from the environs of Habana, where fossils 

 had never been found for cretaceous sediments *) and the later 

 American ') explorers adhered to this view or contended it only 



1) J. W. Spencer, Geol. Magazine (4), I, 1894, p. 448—451 ; Bull. Geol. Soc. 

 America VI. 1895, p. 103—140; Transaciions Ganad. Inslit., V, 1898, p. 359— 368, 

 and many other publications. 



2) R. T. Hill, Bull Museum. Gomp. Zoology, Harvard Goll., 34, 1899, p. 225 

 sqq.: Bull. Geol. Soc. America, XVI, 1905, p. 243 — 288, and many other publications. 



') T. Wayland Vaughan, Bulletin U.S. National Museum, Washington, 103, 

 1919; Contributions to the geology and paleontology of the West Indies, publ. by 

 the Garnegie Inst, of Washington, 1919, in which older pubiicatious are cited in 

 extenso. 



■*) P. Salterain, Boletin Mapa geologico de Espana, VII, 1880. 



5) R. T Hill, Amer. Journal of Science, (3), 48, 1894. p. 196- 212. Bull. Mus 

 Gompar. Zoology Harvard Univ. Geol. Series II, 1895, p. 243-288; B. Willis, 

 Index to the stratigraphy of North America, US. Geol. Survey, Profess. Papers, 

 71, 1912. 



