8S GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



distribution. It is evident, however, that these slight 

 and local phenomena furnish but little clue to the 

 mutations of past periods. These were on a far 

 grander scale and affected vast areas. We have no 

 modern instances of these almost world-wide de- 

 pressions of continents under the sea, though we 

 know that these have occurred, one of them within 

 the human period, and it is idle to speculate as to 

 their rate or duration in the absence of facts. We 

 know pretty certainly, however, from the gauges of 

 time which can be applied to the close of the glacial 

 period, that this latest subsidence must have occurred 

 within six thousand years of our time. 



With reference to the particular movement in 

 question, we know that the close of the palanthropic 

 period was accompanied by a movement at least 

 equal to the difference between the wide lands of the 

 second continental period and the shrunken dimen- 

 sions of the present lands. Besides this we find on 

 the surface of the land modern raised beaches, depo- 

 sits of loess and plateau gravels, intrusions of mud 

 into caves of considerable elevation, and evidences, 

 as in Siberia, of large herds of animals perishing 

 on elevated lands on which they seem to have taken 

 refuge. 1 In short, no geological fact can be better 

 established than the post-glacial subsidence. 



J Prestwich, 'Evidence of Submergence of Western Europe,' Trans. 

 Royal Society^ 1893 ; * Possible Cause for the Origin of the Tradition of 

 the Flood,' Trans, Viet, fnsf., 1894; Dawkin^, Journal Anthrop. Inst., 

 February 1894. Kingsmill and Skertchly (Nature, November 10, 1892) 

 report the Asiatic loess to be marine, and to extend far upward on the 



