594 



SCIENTIFIC RECREATIONS. 



part of France was still under water. Italy consisted only of a long 

 and narrow ridgy peninsula, branching off from the Alps near Savona. 

 Turkey and Greece, south of the Danube, were laid dry ; and a tract of land 

 extended from the Vosges, through central Germany, Bohemia, and the 

 north of Hungary, perhaps to the Balkan. But the whole of the north of 

 Europe and Asia, from Holland eastward to central Tartary, and from 

 Saxony and the Carpathians northward to Sweden, Lapland, and the Ural 

 chain, lay beneath the ocean. The same subterranean movements, which 

 have subsequently raised the wide plains of our northern continents above 

 the sea-level, have given great additional elevation to the then existing 

 land. Thus the Alps have certainly acquired an increased height of from 

 two thousand to four thousand feet since the commencement of the Tertiary 

 period. The Pyrenees, whose highest ridge consists of marine calcareous 



beds, of the age of our chalk 

 and greensand series, while the 

 Tertiary strata at their foot are 

 horizontal, and reach only the 

 height of a few hundred feet 

 above the sea, seem to have 

 been entirely upheaved in the 

 comparatively brief interval between the de- 

 position of the chalk and these Tertiary strata. 

 The Jura, also, owe a great part of their 

 present elevation to convulsions which hap- 

 pened after the deposition of the Tertiary 

 groups. On the other hand, it is possible 

 that some mountain-chains may have been 

 lowered by subsidence, as well as by meteoric 

 degradation, during the same series of ages 

 in this quarter of the globe ; and on some 

 points shallows may have been depressed 

 into deep abysses. But, on the whole, everything tends to show that 

 the great predominance of land which now distinguishes the northern 

 hemisphere has been brought about only at a recent period, and Sir 

 Charles holds that the shifting of the continents is sufficient to account 

 for the variations of climate. We have every reason to believe that before 

 the Glacial epoch England and the Continent were united, and during the 

 Glacial period England and North America were joined, via Greenland and 

 Ireland. Mr. Dawkins says that England at that time was six hundred feet 

 above its present level. If so and we cannot question his conclusions 

 the Channel was then dry. 



The " Great Ice Age " then came upon the world. For the information 

 of readers who wish to peruse the whole history of this epoch and its causes, 

 we may add that in Professor Geikie's most interesting work, they will find 

 full details. We can only refer to it. 



Fig. 684. Cervus Megacer 

 Hl&erttUUf): Irish Elk. Post-Pliocene. 



; (JMegaceroi 



