CHAPTER VIII. 



THE ALPINE FAUNA. 



WE are told by Sir Archibald Geikie (p. 851) that 

 " from the Pyrenees eastwards, through the Alps and 

 Apennines into Greece, and the southern side of 

 the Mediterranean basin, through the Carpathian 

 Mountains and the Balkan into Asia Minor, and 

 thence through Persia and the heart of Asia to 

 the shores of China and Japan, a series of massive 

 limestones has been traced, which, from the abun- 

 dance of their characteristic foraminifera, have been 

 called the Nummulitic Limestone. Unlike the thin, 

 soft, modern-looking, undisturbed beds of the Anglo- 

 Parisian area, these limestones attain a depth of 

 sometimes several thousand feet of hard, compact, 

 sometimes crystalline rock, passing even into marble, 

 and they have been folded and fractured on such a 

 colossal scale that their strata have been heaved up 

 into lofty mountain crests sometimes 10,000, and 

 in the Himalaya range more than 16,000 feet above 

 the sea." " Nowhere in Europe," continues the 

 same author (p. 860), "do oligocene strata play 

 so important a part in the scenery of the land, or 

 present on the whole so interesting and full a picture 



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