26 PALAEOZOIC TIME. [CHAP. II. 



sea which now separates Wales from Ireland, land must 

 then have predominated. Parts of Carnarvon and Anglesey 

 are all that remain of the eastern side of this vanished 

 country. 



" Beyond this there may have been another sea or gulf if 

 the rocks in the east of Ireland are rightly referred to the 

 Cambrian ; but it is a significant fact that no deposits of 

 Cambrian age have been found in any part of central or 

 northern Ireland, or in any part of Scotland, except, per- 

 haps, in Ross and Sutherland. It is rather unlikely, if any 

 considerable part of these areas had been under water in 

 Cambrian times, that every remnant of the deposits then 

 formed should have been since either swept away or covered 

 in. The balance of probability, therefore, is in favour of 

 the conclusion that land masses of considerable size lay to 

 the north and west of what is now G-reat Britain, and 

 formed a Cambrian Atlantis, of which a part of Norway, 

 the Hebrides, Donegal, and the highlands of Connemara 

 are the worn and inconspicuous remains." 



To these remarks it is only necessary to add that at the 

 close of the Cambrian period the sea had gained very 

 largely on the land, that the tract of land indicated as 

 existing over central England was entirely submerged, and 

 that the promontory or island between Wales and Ireland 

 was probably reduced to very narrow limits, though parts 

 of it seem still to have remained above the sea-level. The 

 entire absence of Upper Cambrian rocks, so far as is yet 

 known, in northern Ireland and northern Scotland, seems 

 to justify the supposition that these areas remained in the 

 condition of land throughout the Cambrian period. The 

 Torridon sandstone may have been formed in a narrow 

 gulf penetrating into this land, or else, as Sir A. Ramsay 

 has suggested, in an inland freshwater lake. 



