200 PARISIAN EPOCH. 



living on the earth, still the most elevated creatures of the creation 

 Aquatic and terrestrial species were very numerous ; among them 

 were the iguanodon, the megalosau'rus, and divers crocodiles. 

 Fluviatile tortoises, fishes, and mollusksof fresh water, lived on the 

 borders of lakes, or in their waters. The seas fed ba'culites and 

 turriJites, of whose anterior existence there is no trace, and which, 

 towards the end of the epoch, disappeared at the same time with 

 all trollusks having peculiar chambered shells. Here and there 

 true sharks existed, and have been continued to the present time, 

 although their dimensions are considerably diminished. 



Parisian epoch. The upheaval of Mount Viso, and later, that 

 which gave birth to the Pyrenees, to the Apennines, and all the 

 parallel chains we have cited, prodigiously changed the geographi- 

 cal constitution previously established. The last, especially, pro- 

 duced one of the greatest convulsions Europe has experienced : 

 everything was shaken by it, and the greatest part of what was 

 then under water, was elevated above it, to form an immense con- 

 tinent. This proves the little extension of the parisian sediments 

 then formed, and which are found concentrated, one part in Bel- 

 gium, Artois, Picardy, Isle of France, Normandy, and the opposite 

 coasts of England ; and the other, in the environs of Bordeaux : 

 very few traces are found elsewhere. Hence it follows, that the 

 seas of this formation did not penetrate far into this continent, 

 although they covered the two capitals of the world ; of the vast 

 ocean of preceding ages there only remained a part of the gulf 

 already limited, about Cambridge, Oxford, Exeter, Cherbourg, 

 Angers and Poictiers, which was then narrowed in many places, 

 and widened elsew r here at the expense of the ancient peninsula of 

 Brussels ; it probably communicated with some remains of the 

 North Sea. In the middle were two islands of chalk, the Wealds, 

 of England, and the country of Bray, in France. Another portion 

 of the gulf also remained between Bordeaux and Dax. 



The fauna of the land, at the parisian epoch, was very different 

 from what it had been in preceding epochs. The gigantic sau- 

 rians had disappeared, but there remained great fresh-water cro- 

 codiles, marine arid lacu'strine chelonians, and the earth was 

 inhabited by mammals. The last were then pach'yderms, analogous 

 to tapirs, as the anoplothe'rium and paleothe'rium, which must 

 have been nearly of the form represented (Jig. 309) ; they lived 

 at the same time w r ith some carni'vora of the genus dog, &c. Belem- 

 nites, and all similarly chambered shells, had disappeared from 

 the seas ; the nautilus only remained, and it lived with the cere'- 

 thium giga'nteum (Jig. 148, p. 80), and a multitude of species of 

 nollusk, more or less resembling those of existing seas. 



At this age of our planet, the flora of Europe was still modified ; 

 the cyca'deaB had disappeared, and the co'nifers, presenting still 

 new species, to which were joined the dicotyledons, were found, 



