SUMMABT. 209 



the east coast of India, in tlie ueighbourbood of Madras, 

 and since there are some very remarkable similarities 

 between the fresh-water rocks of the peninsula of India 

 and those of South Africa, while many animals are now 

 common to those two countries, there are very strong 

 reasons for considering that peninsular India (which was 

 then cut off from the rest of Asia by the cretaceous sea) 

 had a land connection with the Cape by way of Madagascar. 

 We know indeed that this southern cretaceous sea com- 

 municated freely with the Atlantic, by what is now Spain 

 and France, and we are thus led to conclude that there was 

 formerly a direct sea communication between the Atlantic 

 and the Bay of Bengal by way of central Asia. Europe 

 and Asia then formed a northern continent separated by 

 this cretaceous sea (of which the Mediterranean ig the 

 shrunken remnant) from a southern continent which 

 included both Africa and India proper. Such is the wide 

 interpretation given to the doctrine of the permanence of 

 continents and ocean-basins. 



The study of the European chalk, besides the two great 

 lessons to which we have especially directed attention, has, 

 therefore, proved to us the former existence of two great 

 seas, in which the cretaceous rocks were deposited — the 

 northern one, being a mare clausum, cut off from the 

 Atlantic, in which was deposited the white chalk ; while 

 the southern one, in which the hard, massive limestones of 

 southern Europe were laid down, proved the connecting link 

 between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, to which we 

 have already alluded. We might j^ursue our subject 

 further, and discuss the origin and nature of the flint and 

 pyrites which are of such common occurrence in the chalk, 

 or we might direct attention to the more valuable and much 

 rarer phospihates which are sometimes contained in it. 

 We might, again, discuss the peculiar characters of the 

 cretaceous fauna, and show how that of the closed northern 

 sea differed from that of the open southern ocean. We 

 might do all this, and more ; but what has been written is 

 sufficient to show ll^e amount of interest and the many 

 weighty prob.v.ii jnnected even with a "Inmp of chalk." 



