THF DISTRICT OF SCHElCflTZ, HITNGAEY. 313 



of the vast masses of andesitic rocks — commenced at trie beginning 

 and continued during all the earlier portions of the Neogene period 

 (that is to say, that they belong to the age of the Miocene proper, 

 the Upper Miocene of Lyell), there is not the smallest room for 

 doubt. At many points, as in the Piliser Gebirge, the tuffs and 

 lavas of this volcanic series are found overlying even the highest 

 members of the Oligocene formation, while the fine flora and fauna 

 yielded by the tuffs themselves, and certain fossiliferous sedimentary 

 dcposits, which at some points are found alternating with the volcanic 

 rocks, are quite sufficient to establish this conclusion as to the age of 

 the latter. 



An examination of the vast masses of lava, agglomerates, tuffs, 

 and ashes themselves, as well as of the fossils associated with them, 

 leads us to infer that the eruptions which produced them were of a 

 subaerial character ; and upon a review of the whole of the pheno- 

 mena, we cannot escape the conclusion that during that great ex- 

 tension of the land-area which characterized the Miocene epoch in 

 this part of the globe a chain of grand volcanos rose parallel to the 

 great curved mountain-axis of the Carpathians. Of the still active 

 volcanos of Europe, the only one which will bear comparison in 

 point of dimensions with the great eruptive centres of Hungary is 

 Etna. But during the period at which the Hungarian volcanos were 

 formed, a complete girdle of volcanic mountains of almost equal di- 

 mensions, though pouring out various materials at different points, 

 surrounded the whole Alpine system and stretched far eastward into 

 Asia. At the same period another chain of equally grand volcanos 

 stretched from the Arctic circle southward, through Iceland, the 

 Faroes, the western side of the British Islands, and thence through 

 the district which is now occupied by the Atlantic, to a latitude 

 south of that of the Cape of Good Hope. 



• No mistake could, however, possibly be greater than to suppose 

 that during this period of the tremendous paroxysmal displays of 

 volcanic energy, there was any thing like an interruption of geologi- 

 cal continuity in the area, or even to imagine that our portion of 

 the globe exhibited the effects of more powerful subterranean action 

 than can, at the present time, be witnessed upon other parts of its 

 surface. On the contrary, we find the clearest proofs that these 

 ejections of volcanic material which have produced such a vast ag- 

 gregate result, were separated by very wide intervals of time, and 

 that the whole continent, and even the slopes of the volcanos them- 

 selves, must have been clothed with that magnificent flora of which 

 such interesting relics have been preserved for our study. "We have 

 also abundant evidence that innumerable lakes were formed among 

 these old volcanos, and quietly filled with sediments, and that these 

 were in turn buried under subsequent ejections from the igneous vents. 

 Nowhere, indeed, can the vastness of the periods of time represented 

 by the great Tertiary epochs be better appreciated than in Eastern 

 Europe, where we find each of them represented by deposits several 

 thousands of feet in thickness. 



Confining our attention again more particularly to the Schemnitz 



