24 INTRODUCTORY. [CHAP. 



echinoderms, yield still more conclusive evidence. "As I have 

 previously pointed out," he writes, "the intimate affinity between 

 those of the West Indies and the Mediterranean can only be 

 explained by the assumption of the existence of a shallow-water 

 connection across the Central Atlantic in at latest Miocene 

 times. That the fauna did not follow along the shores of the North 

 Atlantic basin, is shown by its absence from the northern Miocenes 

 of Europe and North America. The evidence now adduced from 

 the fossil corals of Barbados lends support to this view, as showing 

 that the West Indian fauna is only a fragment of that of the 

 Mediterranean Miocene, and has received nothing from the 

 Pacific. This is in full agreement with Prof. Suess's theory that 

 the Atlantic is of comparatively recent geological age, and arose 

 by the gradual enlargement of two bays which ran north and south 

 from a sea that once extended across the Mid-Atlantic from 

 Europe to America, including both the Mediterranean and the 

 Caribbean Sea." 



The question of the southward extension of America, Africa, 

 and Australia to join the Antarctic continent during Tertiary times 

 is alluded to in the sequel. 



Summing up the evidence in regard to the permanency of 

 oceans and continents, Dr Blanford 1 several years ago observed 

 " that whilst the general permanence of ocean-basins and conti- 

 nental areas cannot be said to be established on anything like 

 firm proof, the general evidence in favour of this view is very 

 strong. But there is no evidence whatever in favour of the 

 extreme view accepted by some physicists and geologists that 

 every ocean-bed now more than 1000 fathoms deep has always 

 been ocean, and that no part of the continental area has ever been 

 beneath the deep sea. Not only is there clear proof that some 

 land-areas lying within continental limits have at a comparatively 

 recent date been submerged over 1000 fathoms, whilst sea-bottoms 

 now over 1000 fathoms deep must have been land in part of the 

 Tertiary era, but there are a mass of facts both geological and 

 biological in favour of land-connection having formerly existed in 

 certain cases across what are now broad and deep oceans." 



1 Appendix, No. 8, p. 107. 



