ADDRESS. 23 



whicli allowed the waters to spread tbemselves over all the inland spaces 

 between the great folded mountain ranges. 



In referring to the ocean basins we should bear in mind that there are 

 three of these in the northern hemisphere — the Arctic, the Pacific, and 

 the Atlantic. De Ranee has ably summed up in a series of articles pub- 

 hshed in ' Nature ' the known facts as to Arctic geology, and I have 

 myself been favoured with opportunities to study many of the collections 

 brought home by the Arctic voyagers, and which are of much interest 

 when viewed in connection with Canadian geology. From these sources 

 we learn that this area presents from without inwards a succession of 

 older and newer formations from the Eozoic to the Tertiary, and that 

 its extent must have been greater in former periods than at present, 

 while it must have enjoyed a comparatively warm climate. The relations 

 of its deposits and fossils are closer with those of the Atlantic than with 

 those of the Pacific, as might be anticipated from its wider opening into 

 the former. Blanford has recently remarked on the correspondence of 

 the marginal deposits around the Pacific and Indian oceans,' and Dr. 

 Dawson informs me that this is equally marked in comparison with the 

 west coast of America,^ but these marginal areas have not yet gained much 

 on the ocean. In the North Atlantic, on the other hand, there is a wide belt 

 of comparatively modern rocks on both sides, more especially toward the 

 south, and on the American side ; but while there appears to be a perfect 

 correspondence on both sides of the Atlantic, and around the Pacific 

 respectively, there seems to be less parallelism between the deposits and 

 forms of life of the two oceans as compared with each other, and less 

 correspondence in forms of life, especially in modern times. Still in the 

 earlier geological ages, as might have been anticipated from the imper- 

 fect development of the continents, the same forms of life characterise 

 the whole ocean from Australia to Arctic America, and indicate a grand 

 unity of Pacific and Atlantic life not equalled in later times,^ and which 

 speaks of contemporaneity rather than of what has been termed homo- 

 taxis. 



We may pause here for a moment to notice some of the efiiects of 



* A singular example is the recurrence in New Zealand of Triassic rocks and fossils 

 of types corresponding to those of British Columbia. A curious modern analogy 

 appears in the works of art of the Maoris with those of the Haida Indians of the 

 Queen Charlotte Islands, and both are eminently Pacific in contradistinction to 

 Atlantic. 



- Journal of Geological Socitty, May 1886. Blanford's statements respecting the 

 mechanical deposits of the close of the Palseozoic in the Indian Ocean, whether these 

 are glacial or not, would seem to show a correspondence with the Permian conglome- 

 rates and earth-movements of the Atlantic area ; but since that time the Atlantic 

 has enjoyed comparative repose. The Pacific also seems to have reproduced the 

 conditions of the Carboniferous in the Cretaceous age, and seems to have been less 

 affected by the great changes of the Pleistocene. 



' Daintree and Etheridge, ' Queensland Geology,' Journal Geological Society, ka^st 

 1872 ; R. Etheridge, Junior, ' Australian Fossils,' Trans. Phys. Soc. Edhi., 1880. 



