ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXIX 



and across Persia by Bagdad to the banks of the Indus. They occur 

 not only in Cutch, but in the mountain-ranges which separate Sinde 

 from Persia, and which form the passes leading to Cabul. They 

 have been followed still further eastward into India, and may be said 

 to enter bodily into the structure of all the continental lands and 

 mountain-chains of the Old World. 



Were we to endeavour to estimate the changes in physical geo- 

 graphy which can be proved by the position of these marine eocene 

 strata to have occurred since the commencement of the tertiary 

 period, we should find them to be very inadequately expressed by 

 stating that they equal in amount the conversion of sea into land of 

 a continent as large and lofty as that of Europe, Asia, and the north 

 of Africa. I endeavoured in 1834, in a map constructed for the 3rd 

 edition of my ' Principles of Geology,' to show the extent of sur- 

 face in Europe and part of Asia which had been covered by water, at 

 some time or other, since the beginning of the eocene period. But, 

 had I been then aware that a true pictorial representation of such 

 modern revolutions in physical geography would have required the 

 submergence of the Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines and Carpathians, and 

 the insertion of a few insignificant islands only in their place, I might 

 have thought such an illustration superfluous or without meaning, 

 and have been satisfied by simply insisting on the post-eocene ubiquity 

 of the ocean — not indeed by a simultaneous, but by a successive oc- 

 cupancy of the whole ground. But how small a portion even of the 

 superficial remodeling of the earth's crust in recent times is expressed, 

 by declaring that we can establish by direct proof or legitimate in- 

 ference the upheaval out of the sea of all the land in Europe, Asia, 

 and part of Africa ! During the same tertiary periods there have 

 been vertical subsidences as well as elevations of the same areas ; and 

 we have every reason to beheve that the larger part of the globe 

 (comprising nearly three-fourths of its superficies), which is covered 

 by water, has undergone, in equal periods of time, oscillations of 

 level not inferior in degree to those to which the continental spaces 

 have been subjected. If therefore we were to confine our thoughts 

 to the mere outward modifications in the shape of the land or bed of 

 the sea, and all the changes of climate and fluctuations in organic 

 life inseparably connected with movements which have amounted, in 

 some cases, to more than two miles vertically in one direction, besides 



