286 BULLETIN OF THE 
Cuba, and the terraces are allof later age. Before this period, which for 
convenience we will call early Pleistocene (properly late Tertiary) it 
must be acknowledged that the area of Cuba, crests and coasts, was at 
least two thousand feet lower in altitude than at present. We cannot 
imagine that such a depression was locally limited to the island of Cuba 
or the Great Antilles, or that it would have abruptly terminated along 
the east and west axial line, and hence it is not difficult to -infer, espe- 
cially in the light of existing geologic evidence, that it involved the 
isthmian portion of the continent south of the great escarpment of the 
Mexican plateau, and that oceanic connection then existed between the 
Atlantic and the Pacific, as has been already indicated by the paleon- 
tology and by the living forms. 
1 See A. Agassiz, The Origin of the West India Fauna, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool., 
Vol. X. No. 1, p. 79, 1888; also, Three Cruises of the “ Blake,” Bull. Mus. Comp. 
Zool., Vol. XIV., 1888. 
