CHAP. VI.] CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD. 87 



features in his map 1 which do not seem to be in any way 

 warranted by the facts. In the first place he unites the 

 land which lay off the north-west of Ireland with that of 

 the southern uplands of Scotland, and makes the Scottish 

 Carboniferous basin open north - westwards into the 

 Atlantic. Probably he would now be inclined to alter 

 this part of his map, for there is certainly much more 

 reason for connecting the North Irish land with that of 

 the Scottish Highlands than with the southern uplands, 

 and the probability of such a connection stands altogether 

 apart from the question of continental land in the North 

 Atlantic. 



In the second place he shows continuous land, not only 

 from the east across the centre of England, but from 

 Wales south-westward to join a mass of land between 

 Ireland and France, so that the sea which covered the 

 south of England is depicted as having no connection 

 whatever with that which covered Ireland and the north 

 of England. Now this is hardly probable ; that land may 

 have existed to the south of Ireland I am prepared to 

 admit, but there is no evidence for connecting it with the 

 central barrier, while the close correspondence between 

 the deposits of South Ireland and those of South Wales 

 and Devon is quite against such a view and in favour of 

 a continuous water-space between them. The prepon- 

 derance of mechanical deposits, and the absence of any 

 thick limestones in the Carboniferous series of Devonshire, 

 points to deposition in a muddy sea which received the 

 sediment brought down by large rivers draining con- 

 tinental land. This land could only have been to the west 

 or south-west, and the overlap of the Culm-measures on 

 to the Petherwyn Beds in Cornwall makes it probable that 

 the shores of this land were not far distant, and may even 

 have traversed part of Cornwall. More information, how- 

 1 " Coal, its History and Uses," 1878, p. 38. 



