THE TETHYS 



283 



zones could freely wander. But having got them, say, 

 from India to Europe, how shall we account for their 

 onward journey across the Atlantic into the Cordillera of 

 the Argentine and Chili? An ocean shore has so far 

 served their needs, what more simple, then, than to 

 imagine this continued across the Atlantic into South 

 America ? It may seem a bold undertaking to connect 



FIG. 87. A Graptolite (Pristiograptus pala, Mob.) as 

 conceived by Freeh. The swimming bladder is seen 

 at the top, surrounded below by gonothecae, and 

 supporting several long colonial stems. After Freeh, 

 "Lethea Geognostica." 



Africa and Brazil by a continental mass of land in order 

 to explain a simple fact in animal distribution ; but the 

 independent investigations of Suess and a great number of 

 other thinkers have afforded much evidence in support of 

 the supposed extension of the Mediterranean into the Carri- 

 bean sea at a period when neither North nor South Atlantic, 

 at least in their present conformation, were in existence. 



