June 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNO^A/^LEDGE ♦ 



IT", 



The first leaves of the first extant volume are so blurred 

 that their meaning is doubtful. Formerly it was held that 

 a continuous belt of absolutely Archaean rocks can be recog- 

 nised westwards of the central portion of the Alpine range. 

 But now it is doubted whether the Alpine formations once 

 regarded as Archasan aie really so. Yet even holding 

 them, as the only possible alternative compels us, to be 

 but metamorphosed equivalents of what originally were 

 lower Palfeozoic strata, their record i^: scarcely less im- 

 pressive. 



A little higher — that is, a little later in the volume — we 

 find unmistakable Sihu-ian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and 

 Permian rocks, uimiistakable becau.se of the fossil forms 

 present in tliem. The oldest fossils actually recognised are 

 Upper Silurian, and speak of a time which, even at the 

 most moderate computation, must be set twenty millions of 

 years back. No geologist, no palceontologist, no biologist of 

 repute would admit any approach to so recent a date as 

 that ; but asti'onomical and physical considerations appear 

 to suggest that we should to that degree shorten the 

 immense periods of time which the geologist regards as 

 demonstrated by the terrestrial record. Taking only that 

 degree of remoteness, and noting that these Upper Silurian 

 strata rest on unfossiliferous ci-ystalline rocks which are 

 certainly much older, our record goes far enough back to 

 overwhelm us by the unimaginable time intervals of which 

 it bears testimony. 



It is curious to read, in these older books of the earth 

 bible, not only of organic remains speaking of the former 

 existence of seas covering the innermost core of the Alpine 

 range, but of abundant corals of Devonian age. For corals 

 are the products of such slow proces.ses of formation that 

 they are eloquent in the evidence they give respecting time. 

 In the carboniferous strata, which belong to a later portion 

 of this earliest Alpine record, we find evidence of an abun- 

 dant flora, no less than sixty forms of vegetation character- 

 istic of that era having been recognised. How many 

 thousands of years the sea stood there and coral reefs were 

 builded up, how long the interval may have been during 

 which for a while these seas retreated and forests grew on 

 the low-lying lands above their level, we cannot tell. But 

 we know that those periods must have been incom- 

 parably longer than those by which we measure the history 

 of man. 



Red .sandstone tracts attest the progress of the Permian 

 era and renewed presence of the sea. Higher (measuring 

 stratigraphically), and therefore later, we find limestone 

 strata crowded with evidence of marine life. Wiiole layers 

 of these Triassic i-ocks are formed of the crinoid stems of 

 fos.sil echinoderms, sea-urchins, brachiopods (including the 

 famili.ar* but most ancient mollusc, the common terebratula), 

 are found in large numbers. Coi-alsnre abundant, and fossil 

 cephalopods, including multitudes of nautili, tell us not only 

 of the forms of life present in that ancient Triassic sea, but 

 also that the more ancient seas could never have departed 

 wholly from the Alpine region, seeing that many of these 

 Triassic fossils are survivals of forms of life belonging to 

 the Palaeozoic period. In passing it may be remarked that 

 certain strata, somewhat metamorphosed but manifestly 

 belonging to the Trias, were penetrated in piercing the Mont 

 Cenis tunnel, and showed a thickness of more than thirteen 

 thousand feet. On the Northern Apennines these strata 

 include the celebrated statuary marbles of ( 'arrara. 



* Familiar in appearance, and so commonly found by the sea- 

 shore, attached to submarine bodies, that probably every one who 

 has ever walked beside the sea has handled dozens of their shells; 

 yet science not only recognises their vast antiquity, but has given 

 them verj' hard names, calling them " pala;obranchiate acephalous 

 bivalve brachiopod molluscs." 



The great thickness of the Triassic limestone in the 

 Eastern Alps a[ipears to show that they must have formed 

 in open seas, free from inroads of sandy or muddy sediment. 

 It is believed by some that in the conglomeratic dolomites 

 of the Eastern Alps we can recognise signs of the breakers 

 of that ancient sea, grinding down the coral reefs and carry- 

 ing the thin dolomites into the lagoons within. 



Higher and later yet, in the Jurassic sei ies, we find similar 

 evidence. Reddish well-bedded limestones, so crowded with 

 Terebratula diphi/a as to be called the Diphya limestone, 

 lighter lime.stones full of ceplialopnds, immense coral reefs — 

 all these atte.st the long-Listing intliience of this second stage 

 of the great ^Icsozoic or secondary period in the formation 

 of the Alpine range. 



Then came the last stage of the secondary period, the 

 Cretaceous. It is strange to picture a time when, where 

 now the Alps rear their snow-covered pe;iks, there were 

 wide seas, beneath whose surface such layers were forming 

 .as those out of which the chalk cliffs of Albion have been 

 carved. Nay, we have evidence that in that selfsame 

 region were once seas bounded by just such clifls, for while 

 we find layers of Cretaceous formation hundreds of feet 

 thick in the Alps, we find also intercalations of coal-bejiring 

 fresh- water beds, showing how the seas from time to time 

 retreated for periods long enough to permit of the aggre- 

 gation of these coal-bearing strata. From some of the lake- 

 beds of that age in the Alps large numbers of reptilian 

 remains have been obtained, incliuling dinosaurs, turtles, a 

 crocodile, a lizird, and a pterodactyle ; in all, no fewer than 

 fourteen genera and eighteen species. Hut, of course, the 

 greater portion of the matter belonging to the Cretaceous 

 era in the Alps is of marine formation. 



And now the record brings us to recent times — not more, 

 perhaps, than a million of years ago, or some such trifling 

 period as that. 



Of the earlier tertiary era, the Eocene, the dawn of 

 modern life-forms has left clear evidence in the Alpine rock- 

 masses. A remarkable feature of the Eocene strata in the 

 Alpine region is the presence of immense erratic boulders of 

 far greater antiquity, apparently carried off by great glaciers 

 from Archaean masses such as still exist in' Southern 

 Bohemia, and borne across sea on ice-floes to tlie Alpine 

 shores. But if a wide sea existed during the Eocene age in 

 the Alpine region, there were alternations during which 

 land appeared, for in the Northern TjtoI a seam of coal 

 thirty-two feet thick occurs as an Eocene deposit. 



The Oligocene .age, still nearer to our own time, is repre- 

 sented with wonderful fulness in the Swiss Alps. Massive 

 mountains, such as the Rigi and Rossberg, are almo.st wholly 

 formed from Oligocene strata, several thousand feet in thick- 

 ness, out of which they have beeti carved. Tliey attest very 

 clearly the presence of the sea, but they have also preserved 

 in singular perfection large ntunbers of the plants originally 

 clothing the neighbouring Alpine shores, and even the 

 insects which, in those far-off ages, flitted through the 

 Alpine woodlands. 



In the Miocene or latest portion of the tertiary age we 

 have clearer and fuller evidence yet. " In the Oeningen 

 beds," says Archibald Geikie, " so gently have the leaves, 

 flowers, and fruits fallen, and so well have they been pre- 

 served, that we may actually trace the alternation of the 

 seasons by the succession of the diflerent conditions of the 

 plants. Selecting 482 of those plants which admit of com- 

 parison, Heer remarks that 131 might be referred to a tem- 

 perate, 266 to a fub-tropical, and 85 to a tropical zone." 

 Between 800 and 900 species of insects have been obtained 

 from Oeningen. Wood-beetles were especially numerous 

 and large. " Nor did the larger animals escape preserva- 

 tion," to quote Geikie's rather odd expressiou, in the silt of 



