OF CREATION". 297 



It is not unlikely that at this time, when the pa- 

 laeotherium and the dinotheriuin were thus compa- 

 nions of the elephant, a large fresh- water lake covered 

 what is now the valley of the Middle Rhine. This 

 supposition involves the existence of tracts of land 

 enclosing such lake, but the direction of the land 

 must have been somewhat different from that now 

 adjacent. An open sea then seems to have extended 

 from the Caspian and Black Seas towards the north- 

 west, quite into the north of Switzerland. The pre- 

 sent chain of the Alps was rising and assuming the 

 character of a mountain range, forming, perhaps, 

 islands in this great sea, which must have covered the 

 whole of Italy, Turkey, and Greece, a great part of 

 Asia Minor, and much of northern Africa. The great 

 features of the modern fauna, and even of the flora 

 of these districts, were, however, already in the course 

 of development ; the continent of Europe was begin- 

 ning to assume its general contour ; England was, 

 perhaps, already an island, though in that case only 

 recently separated from the main land, to which it 

 was afterwards united ; and the pent-up gases, whose 

 efforts to escape were lifting extensive districts above 

 the sea-level, and forming great chains of mountains 

 in north Italy, were partly and at intervals relieved 

 by volcanic eruptions which took place in central 

 France, in north-eastern Spain, and in the Lower 

 Rhine, near the present town of Bonn. Possibly it 

 was also at this time (though the event may have oc- 

 curred earlier) that the great submarine flow of melt- 

 ed rock took place, whose effects are seen in the 

 north-east of Ireland and the opposite islands of 

 Scotland, where the chalk is covered by this erupted 



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