474 . Revieics — HulVs Sub-oceanic Lands. 



In this atlas Professor Hull gives us a view of those submarine 

 foundations of Britain, stretching out over a wide area around our 

 shores, which were almost certainly dry land, during Pleistocene or 

 early prehistoric times, when these Islands (then continental areas) 

 were inhabited by Palgeolithic man and largely covered by forests 

 and vast grassy plains, the home of the mammoth and rhinoceros, 

 its rivers and lakes frequented by the hippopotamus, its pampas-like 

 plains affording abundant pasturage for countless wild horses, herds 

 of red deer and reindeer, bison and elks, which were free to migrate^ 

 with the seasons, and rovebydrj- land from Anglia over the continent, 

 from Yorkshire to Brittany, and to cross the valley of the Irish Sea 

 into the then United Ireland also ; whilst the Machairodus, the cave- 

 lion, wolves, bears, and hyaenas battened upon the herbivora, and 

 contended Avith early man for possession of the warmest caves and 

 rock-shelters. 



But we are digressing, for the author does not treat of the fauna 

 and flora, but devotes himself specially to the physical features of the 

 then dry land which now forms the ' continental shelf whereon our 

 Islands rest, and whicli once was no mean part of Britannia's drt/ land — 

 drained on the west by the Irish River Channel, on the south by the 

 English Channel Kiver, while numerous continental rivers, as the 

 Ehine, the Weser, the Elbe, flowed north, and the Seine, the Loire, 

 Gironde, Adour, and our own Thames all reached the edge of the 

 continental platform far to the south. 



Plate i presents us with an outline, on a small scale, of the British 

 Islands and adjacent seas, showing the limits of the continental plat- 

 form where shallow soundings end and deep water sets in, the margin 

 descending from 200 to 500, to 750, and 1,000 fathoms, or over 

 a mile in depth. 



Plate ii on a double page is an orographical map of tiie British 

 Isles with isobathic contours, and showing the courses of the 

 submerged river valleys as far as the author has been able to trace 

 them by the aid of the soundings furnished by the Admiralty Charts. 



Plate iii gives the coast of the English Channel and the Bay of 

 Biscay with all the soundings as shown on the charts and the lower 

 border of the continental platform along the French and English coastp. 

 On this subject it will be remembered that Godwin-Austen brought 

 before the Geological Society an elaborate paper (published in 1850) 

 on the valley of the English Channel, illustrated by a chart. 



Plate iv, which is a two-page size map, shows the west coast of 

 Spain and Portugal, the soundings being added. 



Plate V, another two-page map, gives the western Mediterranean 

 coasts, Spain, France, and Italy, with Corsica and Sardinia, Sicily, etc., 

 and the submerged land platforms around them like our own Islands. 



Plate vi shows the west coast of Africa, and the submerged 

 valley of the Congo extending for 1 22 miles to the westward. 



Plate vii gives us the British Islands during the Lower Glacial 

 epoch, all submerged except the small areas of highlands and the 

 southern portion, together with the narrow chalk barrier between the 

 Straits of Dover then still existing. 



Plate viii introduces a map of Norway and its grand series of 



