President's Address. 11 
b 
the same time, the “ Central Mediterranean” surrounded the 
archipelago of Southern and Central Europe, and sent out 
long arms into the heart of Asia. One of these arms passed 
south of the “ Scandinavian Island” into the Arctic Ocean, 
and a second passed to the east of the “ Turanian Island” 
into the same ocean. A third traversed India south of the 
region now occupied by the Himalaya mountains, and 
entered the Indian Ocean. Finally, a wide southern pro- 
longation — the “ Ethiopian Mediterranean ”—occupied the 
area between the east coast of Africa and the Indo- Madagascar 
peninsula. 
This sketch of the distribution of land and sea in Upper 
Jurassic times, as restored by Neumayr, exhibits to us a 
picture enormously different to that shown by our modern 
maps; and it is hard to see in what sense the changes neces- 
sary to bring about such an altered state of matters can be 
reasonably spoken: of as “ local” or “ partial.” 
Passing from the Jurassic to the Cretaceous period, we find 
that in the commencement of the latter epoch the European 
area, at any rate, was largely in the condition of dry land, 
with the exception of a few areas covered by extensive 
brackish-water lakes. Towards the close of the Cretaceous 
period, however, marine conditions were again established 
over a large portion of Europe. Thus, at the time of the 
deposition of the White Chalk, or of deposits having imme- 
diate relationships with this, a great part of the European 
area was covered by the waters of a Mediterranean Sea, the 
extent of which may be approximately inferred from the 
present outcrops of the strata in question. Dr W. Fraser 
Hume, who has specially studied this problem (“ The Genesis 
of the Chalk,” Proc. Geol. Assoc., vol. xiii., part 7, 1894), con- 
cludes that as from the western outcrop of the Chalk in 
Antrim “to its eastern exposure at Uralsk, in East Russia, 
is 2000 miles, and from its northern boundaries in Sweden 
and Scotland to its final appearance in the south of France, 
near Nice, is not less than 500 miles, it may fairly be pre- 
sumed that the Chalk Ocean in Europe covered an area of 
over 500,000 square miles.” He adds that this calculation 
“is exclusive of any similar deposits in Asia, and ignores the 
