800 REPORT— 1892. 



the old disturbed rocks of Central Europe, formed for a long time the only land in 

 our area. Between the ancient Scandinavian tract in the North and a narrow 

 interrupted belt in Central Europe stretched a shallow sea, which covered all the 

 regions that now form our Great Plain ; while immediately south of the central 

 belt lay the wide depression of the Mediterranean — for as yet the Pyrenees, the 

 Alps, and the Carpathians were not. Both the Mediterranean and the Russo- 

 Germanic sea commiuiicated with the Atlantic. As time went on land continued 

 to be developed along the same lines, a result due partly to crustal movements, 

 partly to sedimentation. Thus by-and-by the relatively shallow Russo-Germanic 

 sea became silted up, while the Mediterranean shore-line advanced southwards. 

 It is interesting to note that the latter sea, down to the close of Tertiary times, 

 seems always to have communicated freely with the Atlantic, and to have beeu 

 relatively deep. The Russo-Germanic sea, on the contrary, while now and again 

 opening widely into the Atlantic, and attaining considerable depths in its western 

 reaches, remained on the whole shallow, and ever and anon vanished from wide 

 areas to contract into a series of inland seas and large salt lakes. 



Reduced to its simplest elements, therefore, the structure of Europe shows two 

 primitive ridges — one extending with some interruptions along the Atlantic sea- 

 board, the other traversing Central Europe from west to east, and separating the 

 area of the Great Plain from the Mediterranean basin. The excessive denudation 

 which the more ancient lands have undergone, and the great uplifts of Mesozoic 

 and of Cainozoic times, together with the comparatively recent submergence of 

 broad tracts in the north and north-west, have not succeeded in obscuring the 

 dominant features in the architecture of our continent. 



I now proceed to trace, as rapidly as I can, the geographical development of 

 the coast-lines of the Atlantic as a whole, and to point out the chief contrasts 

 between them and those of the Pacific. The extreme irregularity of the Arctic 

 and Atlantic shores of Europe at once suggests to a geologist a partially drowned 

 land, the superficial inequalities of which are accountable for the vagaries of the 

 coast-lines. The fiords of Norway and Scotland occupy what were at no distant 

 date land valleys, and the numerous marginal islands of those regions are merely 

 the projecting portions of a recently sunken area. The continental plateau 

 extends up to and a little beyond the 100-fathoms line, and there are many 

 indications that the land formerly reached as far. Thus the sunken area is tra- 

 versed by valley-like depressions, which widen as they pass outwards to the edge 

 of the plateau, and have all the appearance of being hollows of subaerial erosion. 

 I have already mentioned the fact that the Scandinavian uplands and the Scottish 

 Highlands are the relics of what were at one time true mountains of elevation, 

 corresponding in the mode of their formation to those of Switzerland, and, like 

 these, attaining a great elevation. During subsequent stages of Palseozoic times 

 that highly elevated region was subjected to long-continued and profound erosion 

 — the mountain country was planed down over wide regions to sea-level, and 

 broad stretches of the reduced land surface became submerged. Younger Palaeo- 

 zoic formations then accumulated upon the drowned land, until eventually renewed 

 crustal disturbance supervened, and the marginal areas of the continental plateau 

 again appeared as dry land, but not, as before, in the form of mountains of eleva- 

 tion. Lofty table-lands now took the place of abrupt and serrated ranges and 

 chains — table-lands which, in their turn, were destined in the course of long ages 

 to be deeply sculptured and furrowed by subaerial agents. During this process 

 the European coast-line woidd seem to have coincided more or less closely with 

 the edge of the continental plateau. Finally, after many subsequent movements 

 of the crust in these latitudes, the land became partially submerged — a condition 

 from which North-western and Northern Europe would appear in recent times to 

 be slowly recovering. Thus the highly indented coast-line of those regions does 

 not coincide with the edge of the plateau, but with those irregularities of its upper 

 surface which are the result of antecedent subaerial erosion. 



Mention has been made of the Russo-Germanic plain and the Mediterranean 

 as representing original depressions in the continental plateau, and of the high 

 grounds that extend between them as regions of dominant elevation, which, 



