20 THE SUNKEN ISLAND OF ATLANTIS. 
liad sprung up, assisted by favourable circumstances, a rich vegetation, 
Everywliere the soil seems to have been covered with thick virgin 
forests, whilst swampy valleys offered favourable conditions for the accu- 
mulation of vast vegetable masses, which can be only vaguely compared 
to our peat formations continued through thousands of years. In- 
numerable skeletons of plants heaped upon each other, and finally 
covered with mud and sand, form our lignite beds. Nevertheless, in 
the great deposits of clay, sami, and gravel, tliey occupy only an in- 
significant part, and in extent they are far more limited than the latter, 
just as the formation of the peat was always dependent upon local con- 
ditions. Now if we trace the boundaries of Europe as they existed in 
that period aud as they present themselves in the Europe of our own 
days, we have a space much more limited and of a very different shape 
to the existing continent. Instead of a great continent, we have a 
group of larger and smaller islands, connected in various w^ays, and 
amongst which we generally recognize no more than our principal 
mountain-chains. I may add that they certainly did not attain the 
great height they assume at present ; that the whole formed rather a 
hilly country without spreading out in large and wide plains. The 
details of this general sketch and the special reasons for my belief in 
its con'ectness I must reserve for another occasion. 
North America, unlike Europe, was at that time larger in territory 
than it is now. The present highly practical inhabitants of that 
continent ^vonld not mind exchanging their native country for the 
America of the Tertiary period. The very few and insignificant Ter- 
tiary deposits of the northern parts of that continent are proofs that 
in its whole present extent it must have been in the period alluded to 
above the sea-level. Moreover, deep sea-soundings taken in the Atlantic 
Ocean sliow, and render it more than probable, that its eastern shores 
extended far into the Atlantic Ocean. ' 
The most important point, however, is to find out about the islands 
which in those days existed between Europe and America, for, if there 
was a communication between the tw^o continents, they must in some 
way have been connected with it. Proofs to that effect are not 
wanting. It must excite surprise to fifid in the northernmost of them, 
a volcanic island, numeroiis traces of brown-coal and the plants accom- 
panying it, A considerable number of them agree exactly with species 
wliich at one time covered the whole European continent; the eight 
