1851.] OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 33 
dreds, including numerous insects, is identical with any form now 
living. This point, on which he first insisted on his return from 
the Alps in 1848, Sir R. had considered to be of paramount im- 
portance in proving, that terrestrial life was much less endowed with 
the capacity to resist physical changes of the surface than submarine 
life; for here we have a fauna which is Pliocene in the order of 
the strata, and yet is not Eocene in its animal and vegetable con- 
tents. 
A certain number of the more remarkable animals that lived during 
this younger tertiary age were then adverted to, such as the Rhino- 
ceros and other large quadrupeds, the fossil Viverrine fox (the 
original of which was on the table), the huge Salamander (Andrias 
Scheuchzeri) anda Chelydra which had been described as analogous to 
_ the snapping turtle of the southern states of North America. These, 
with quantities of plants, including small palms, were all indicatives 
of a warm and genial climate ; and on such sure grounds the second 
diagram placed the Alps before the spectators as covered with a 
suitable vegetation, and with several of the abovementioned animals 
in the foreground. 
Having satisfied himself, in common with M. Studer, M. Escher, 
and all the geologists who have well explored the Alps, that every 
where along their northern flank a terrific dislocation has occurred, 
amounting in many places to a total inversion of mountains, be- 
tween the older Tertiary and those younger deposits which were 
accumulated under the waters during the period he had just been 
describing, Sir Roderick then briefly pointed out that he had demon- 
strated in detail elsewhere: viz. that the sands and pebble-beds of 
that age had been suddenly heaved up from beneath the waters all 
along the outer or northern flank of the chain, so as to form 
mountainous masses, the inverted and truncated ends of which had 
been forced under the edges of the very rocks out of whose detritus 
they had been formed. 
Before this great revolution had taken place no large erratic 
blocks were known, but after it they became common, and were the 
necessary production of that intensely cold climate to which the Alps 
were then subjected; a change of which their surface bears distinct 
evidence. 
During the same period the low countries of northern Europe 
were covered by an Arctic sea. If such waters then extended to 
the Jura and the Alps, icebergs and rafts must have been detached 
from the latter, carrying away blocks of stone northwards, to be 
dropped at intervals, just as it has been demonstrated that the 
Scandinavian blocks were dropped in Prussia, Poland, and the low 
lands of Russia, when all those regions were under the influence 
of anArcticsea. Bavaria, and the lower parts of the Cantons Vaud, 
Neufchatel, and Berne, were, it is supposed, then covered by waters 
which bathed the foot of the Alps. 
That the change from a former genial climate to the first great 
