A DROWNED CONTINENT 119 
English chalk, which had been supposed to have analogies 
with the modern Atlantic deposits, appears to have been 
laid down in a sea of much less depth and extent, and 
probably more nearly comparable with the modern Medi- 
terranean, Then, again, it was found that large tracts in 
some of our present continents, such as Africa and India, 
had existed as dry land throughout a very considerable 
portion of geological time. Moreover, it was asserted that 
no formations exactly comparable to those now in course 
of deposition in the ocean abysses could be detected in 
any of our existing continents or islands; while it was 
further urged that in none of the so-called oceanic islands 
(that is, those rising from great depths at long distances 
from the continental areas) were there either fossiliferous 
or metamorphic rocks similar to those of the continents 
and larger continental islands. 
This was the second swing of the pendulum, and for a 
long period it was confidently asserted that where con- 
tinents now exist there had never been any excessive 
depth of ocean; and, conversely, that in the areas now 
occupied by the great ocean abysses there had never been 
land during any of the later geological epochs. It was, 
indeed, practically affirmed that wherever the sounding-line 
indicates a thousand fathoms or more of water, there sea 
had been practically always, and that no part of the 
present continents had ever been submerged to anything 
like that depth. 
Almost as soon as the pendulum of opinion had attained 
the full limits of its swing in this direction (and this swing 
had been largely due to the influence of geologists and 
physicists), there began to be signs of its return to a less 
extreme position. It was, in the first place, proved that 
a few deposits—and these of comparatively recent date— 
