LAMARCK'S WORK IN GEOLOGY 



107 



were formed by the same means, and the sea not 

 breaking through the Isthmus of Panama was turned 

 southward, and the action of its currents resuhed in 

 detaching the island of Tierra del Fuego from South 

 America. In hke manner New Zealand was separated 

 from New Holland, Madagascar from Africa, and 

 Ceylon from India. 



He then refers to other " displacements of the 

 ocean basin," to the shallowing of the Straits of 

 Sunda, of the Baltic Sea, the ancient subsidence of 

 the coast of Holland and Zealand, and states that 

 Sweden offers all the appearance of having recently 

 emerged from the sea, while the Caspian Sea, formerly 

 much larger than at present, was once in communi- 

 cation with the Black Sea, and that some day the 

 Straits of Sunda and the Straits of Dover will be dry 

 land, so that the union of England and France will 

 be formed anew. 



Strangely enough, with these facts known to him, 

 Lamarck did not see that such changes were due to 

 changes of level of the land rather than to their being 

 abandoned or invaded by the sea, but explained these 

 by his bizarre hypothesis of westward-flowing currents 

 due to the moon's action ; though it should be in all 

 fairness stated that down to recent times there have 

 been those who believed that it is the sea and not the 

 land which has changed its level. 



This idea, that the sea and not the land has changed 

 its level, was generally held at the time Lamarck wrote, 

 though Strabo had made the shrewd observation that 

 it was the land which moved. The Greek geographer 

 threw aside the notion of some of his contemporaries, 



