68 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



SOUTHERN EUROPE. 



RETURNING to the west coast of France, we find tba 

 important invasion of the sea, which, in the eighth 

 century, destroyed a great space of poor and forest 

 land, separating Mont St. Michael from the main 

 shore ; * and, in the Bay of Biscay, the currents and 

 winds continuing the encroachment on the coast, they 

 have in some places advanced two miles within a 

 century. 



But the Spanish peninsula, forming a plateau the 

 most elevated of Europe, more than 2000 feet above 

 the ocean, without an existing volcanic crater on its 

 surface, is nevertheless subject to violent earthquakes, 

 particularly on the side of the Atlantic. Geologically, 

 as regards ossiferous breccias, the southern point of 

 the peninsula reproduces, at Gibraltar, a stratification 

 which occurs about Genoa, and is repeated in the 

 islands on the coast of Dalmatia. They have all com- 

 pressed, between beds of limestone, innumerable re- 

 mains of mammals, held in a matrix much harder than 

 the bones themselves. In zoological affinity, Spain, 

 and a considerable portion of the greater Mediterra- 

 nean islands, bear an African rather' than an European 



* There is an earlier great event of this kind recorded in 

 history, in the reign of Gallienus, when one or two Romano- 

 Celtic cities, in Armorica or Bretagne, were destroyed. 

 That in the reign of Charlemagne was equally destructive 

 on the coasts of France and in the Baltic. 



