364 GEIKIE 



while the rhinoceros and mastodon roamed through the 

 woodlands. 



A marked feature of this period in Europe was the 

 abundance and activity of its volcanoes. In Hungary, 

 Rhineland, and Central France, numerous vents opened 

 and poured out their streams of lava and showers of ashes. 

 From the south of Antrim, also, through the west coast 

 of Scotland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, even far 

 into Arctic Greenland, a vast series of fissure-eruptions 

 poured forth successive floods of basalt, fragments of 

 which now form the extensive volcanic plateaux of these 

 regions. 



The mild climate indicated by the vegetation in the 

 deposits of the Swiss lake prevailed even into Polar lati- 

 tudes, for the remains of numerous evergreen shrubs, oaks, 

 maples, walnuts, hazels, and many other trees have been 

 found in the far north of Greenland, and even within 8 15' 

 of the pole. The sea still occupied much of the lowlands 

 of Europe. Thus it ran as a strait between the Bay of 

 Biscay and the Mediterranean, cutting off the Pyrenees 

 and Spain from the rest of the continent. It swept round 

 the north of France, covering the rich fields of Touraine 

 and the wide flats of the Netherlands. It rolled far up 

 the plains of the Danube, and stretched thence eastward 

 across the south of Russia into Asia. 



By this time some of the species of shells which still 

 people the European seas had appeared. So long have 

 they been natives of our area that they have witnessed the 

 rise of a great part of the continent. Some of the most 

 stupendous changes which they have seen have taken place 

 in the basin of the Mediterranean, where, at a comparatively 

 recent geological period, parts of the sea-floor were up- 

 heaved to a height of 3000 feet. It was then that the 

 breadth of the Italian peninsula was increased by the belt 

 of lower hills that flanks the range of the Apennines. Then, 

 too, Vesuvius and Etna began their eruptions. Among 

 these later geographical events also we must place the 

 gradual isolation of the Sea of Aral, the Caspian, and the 

 Black Sea from the rest of the ocean, which is believed to 

 have once spread from the Arctic regions down the west 



