204 MODERN EPOCH. 



to the centre of Asia, was marked by the sudden cooling of Euro- 

 pean countries to their present temperature. From that time 

 palms ceased to grow in Europe, and dicotyle'donous plants were 

 prodigiously increased. The rhinoceros, elephants, and panthers, 

 which had just appeared in that part of the world, became entirely 

 extinct there ; and, if the cavern bear is represented in our present 

 bear, its size is considerably diminished. The fauna of that part 

 of the world was again completely changed, and replaced by that 

 we now see. Besides, it was at this moment, probably, that man 

 appeared on the earth : in fact, on one hand, there are no human 

 remains in what has been too lightly named dilu'vium, for the 

 skeletons of Guadaloupe are of the modern epoch, and cannot be 

 reckoned ; and, on the other, the animals which then began are 

 precisely those with which man has always lived, since historic 

 time. 



Modern epoch. From the epoch of the principal Alps, no general 

 geological disturbance has taken place in Europe; and some volcanic 

 eruptions and upheavals, produced by earthquakes, are the only 

 effects that have been manifest. Such, also, appears to have been 

 the action of the 13th upheaval, which was revealed in the Morea, 

 in Naples, Sicily, and in some parts of Provence, and which, per- 

 haps, also determined the eruption of the modern volcanoes of 

 Auvergne and Vivarais, through ancient fissures, the beautiful 

 preservation of which attests their posteriority to the great denuda- 

 tions which followed the event of the principal Alps. 



But if scarcely anything occurred in Europe after this great 

 event, perhaps it was not the same in other parts of the world. 

 We may suspect that a great part of the immense mountain range 

 which extends through America, and traverses Asia from Kamt- 

 schatka to the Birman empire, is the result of a more recent catas 

 trophe ; this direction, at least, offers the most extended, the most 

 decided, and, so to speak, the least effaced feature of the exterior 

 configuration of the earth. It is there we see the greatest numbei 

 of active volcanoes, and consequently the most extensive and best 

 preserved communication between the interior and exterior of the 

 globe, and perhaps, also, the greatest mass of volcanic products 

 known. 



Deluge. The successive appearance of great mountain chains 

 has produced great disturbances in different parts of the globe. 

 But it is evident that these catastrophes, at least those of great 

 energy, and those which extended over large spaces, as the up- 

 heavals of the Alps, Pyrenees, &c., must have manifested their 

 action over all the rest of the earth in secondary phenomena 

 of more or less importance. If a simple earthquake is enough tc 

 produce a violent agitation of the sea, a sudden irruption of waters 

 on continents, these terrible revolutions could, not have failed to 

 cause more or less impetuous movements in the ocean, and tern 



