Senry Woodward — Old Land- surfaces. 493 



It includes changes of level and modifications of coast-lines of 

 enormous extent. In Australia the land has probably undergone 

 great depression, for we find old land-surfaces at a depth of more 

 than 100 feet beneath the present surface {vide E. Brough-Smyth's 

 "Gold Fields of Victoria") covered with remains of a vegetation 

 exactly like that now existing, and inhabited by many of the same 

 species of animals, as well as by gigantic Marsupials now quite extinct. 



In Northern Africa we have evidences of a great upheaval in 

 Quaternary times, which laid dry the Sahara, and produced a wonder- 

 ful climatal change in Southern Europe [vide Prof. Desor's paper, 

 Geol. Mag., Vol. I., p. 27, translated by Prof. Eamsay). 



In Britain we have abundant evidences of depression and upheaval 

 in late geological times, as witnessed by our Glacial deposits re- 

 quiring a change of level of 1,500 or 2,000 feet {vide " Lyell," 

 Shells on Moel Tryfaen, "Principles," vol. i., p. 195, tenth edition; 

 and "Elements," p. 158, sixth edition). 



The coast of Norway, with its raised beaches of recent shells, also 

 attests a change of level of more than 200 feet ("Lyell's Principles," 

 tenth edition, vol. ii., p. 191). 



The west coast of Greenland, on the contrary, has been subsiding 

 during the past century for a distance surveyed of more than 600 

 miles from north to south. 



The submerged forests around our own coasts are silent witnesses 

 to the same ceaseless round of change ; whilst the evidences derived 

 from their ancient fauna show an equally marked variation in climate 

 and distribution. 



Passing from Quaternary to Tertiary times, we have in the de- 

 posits of our own island, in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, 

 and Greece, abundant evidence both of land-plants and animals 

 diverging, however, more and more from those which occupy the 

 same regions at the present day. 



In this long series of Tertiary and Quaternary deposits, evidences 

 of terrestrial conditions seem present in almost every stratum, and 

 we never lose sight of land, but when the base of the Tertiaries is 

 reached the land-surfaces are divided by greater marine accumu- 

 lations. Still, freshwater deposits, with land-plants and animals, 

 mark the incoming of the Chalk series in America, and the Maestricht 

 Chalk is found to afford remains of Dinosaurian and Amphibian 

 Eeptiles, although these former have yet to be described.' 



Leaves of exogenous plants have long been known from the 

 " Quader Sandstein " and the " Planer-kalk," of Germany, beds 

 equivalent in age to the White Chalk and Gault of England. 



More recently, in the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle, beds 

 have been discovered several hundreds of feet in thickness rich in 

 silicified woods and impressions of leaves, representing more than 

 two hundred species, of which Tree-ferns, Conifers, and Dicoty- 

 ledonous Angiosperms form the chief part. In the Kentish Chalk 

 itself — a truly marine deposit — evidences exist (in the remains of 



^ The specimens referred to are in the collections lately acquired by the British 

 Museum from the Van Breda Museum at Haarlem. 



