﻿The Structure of Europe. 235 



and has pushed its way through a schist conglomerate 

 containing pebbles and boulders of quartz-porphyry, sand- 

 stone, green schist, and occasionally also anorthosite quite 

 like some facies of the adjoining mass. Apparently a long 

 interval separated the anorthosite eruption from that of 

 the granite. The sharp segregation of a magma into a 

 basic anorthosite and a very acid granite would in any 

 case be rather surprising. 



On the Structure of Europe. 



A Lecture by Professor Edward Suess. 

 (Translated from the German by Nevil Norton Evans, M.A.Sc.) 



I wish to address you to-day upon the structure of 

 Europe, partly because I can assume as familiar to each 

 one of you not only the main outlines but also the details 

 of the relief, and further because in this portion of the 

 world which we inhabit we are dealing with the most 

 complicated part of the earth's surface. Before, however, 

 proceeding to my subject proper, permit me to make a 

 few remarks upon the structure of mountains in general. 



On this chart we have the series of formations^ into 

 which it is customary to divide the rocks which form the 

 crust of the earth. We ascend from the oldest, the 

 Archaean, through the long series of stratified formations 

 to the youngest deposits of the Tertiary formation and of 

 the present time. 



The names as here tabulated present to us a chrono- 

 logical scale, a scheme, according to which we are able to 

 state, from existing remains, which are the older and 

 which the younger sediments ; the absolute age of any is 

 unknown to us. We do not know the number of millions 

 of years which measure these periods of time. 



1 1. Archaean. 2. Cambrian. 3. Silurian. 4. Devonian. 5. Carboniferous. 6. 

 Permian. 7. Trlassic. 8. Jurassic. 9. Cretaceous. 10. Tertiary. 



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