OF CREATION. 803 



The middle tertiary period, whose gigantic pachy- 

 derms unite such distant quarters of the globe, is, 

 after all, but poorly represented by fossils in Europe, 

 except in the valley of the Rhine. But we have 

 good proof of changes then going on which mark the 

 lapse of a long series of ages; and it is most likely 

 that during this period nearly the whole Alpine chain 

 of Europe, and the great range of the Caucasus, 

 attained considerable elevation, while vast masses of 

 sand and other deposited matter were accumulated 

 in the neighbouring seas in those parts of the Conti- 

 nent now known as the great valley of Switzerland 

 and the valley of the Danube. The volcanoes of 

 central France, of the north-east of Spain, and of 

 the lower Rhine and the Eifel, were still in full 

 action ; a great part of the Continent was in process of 

 elevation ; much of the older transported matter call- 

 ed gravel and boulder clay, and many of the erratic 

 blocks, were already covering up some of the more 

 regularly deposited strata; and icebergs, detached 

 from the shores of a polar sea, were now floated down 

 from high latitudes by marine currents, and bore with 

 them fragments of rock, the abundant presence of 

 which, when broken into small pieces, and mixed 

 together, has proved so great a puzzle to Geologists. 

 Perhaps, too, great waves, produced by the sudden 

 elevation of extensive tracts of the sea-bottom, then 

 washed over the low lands with unusual violence, 

 tearing up as they advanced every interposed object, 

 and, after conveying the broken rocks for a short dis- 

 tance, leaving them in heaps at the mercy of the 

 next of the great waves of the same kind that might 

 sweep by in consequence of another upheaval. 



