CRETACEOUS PERIOD. 491 



above the present level of the ocean, except sparingly in estua- 

 ries ; and it has hence been inferred that the continent on the 

 east and south, during that prolonged interval after the Appala- 

 chian revolution, stood with the coast-line situated outside of its 

 present position (p. 441). And if it be true that the earlier half 

 of the Cretaceous rocks are not represented among the beds of 

 the Atlantic and Gulf borders, as now appears (p. 468), this 

 prolonged interval must have continued until this much of the 

 period had passed. The absence of sea-shore beds along a broad 

 and shallow ocean border, like that of the western Atlantic, cannot 

 otherwise be explained. The change submerging the present 

 coast did not come on until the epoch of the Middle Cretaceous, 

 and perhaps not till part of it had passed (p. 468). The lowest 

 sandy beds, with their fossil wood, appear to mark the transition 

 from the elevated to the submerged condition of the border, 

 when the encroaching waters buried the vegetation of the land 

 and the Cretaceous formation of the present coast had its com- 

 mencement. 



It appears from the above that the preceding remarks on the 

 Geography of America in the Cretaceous period apply to the conti- 

 nent only in the later part of the period. 



3. Foreign Geography. — The distribution of the Cretaceous 

 beds over other continents shows that the lands were to a great 

 extent submerged. The sea covered a large part of the region of 

 the Andes, as well as of the Rocky Mountains, and both chains 

 were to a great extent not yet flexed into mountain-shape ; the 

 Alps, Pyrenees, and Himalayas were also under water, or only in 

 their incipient stages of elevation. Europe was mostly a great ar- 

 chipelago, with its largest area of dry land to the north : it resembled 

 North America in the latter point, while widely differing in the 

 former. The Urals and Norwegian mountains were the principal 

 ranges of Europe, as the Appalachians and the Laurentian heights 

 of Canada and beyond were in America. Western Britain was the 

 high land of that region, and under its lee and that of other lands 

 southwestward across the Channel, the new formations of eastern 

 England and northern France were in progress on the borders of 

 the German Ocean. 



4. Climate. — The geographical distribution of species indicates 

 a prevalence of warm seas in the northern hemisphere to the 

 parallel of 60°, and in the southern to the Straits of Magellan. For 

 the table on page 487 shows that several species are common to 

 Britain, Europe, and either equatorial America, India, or the 

 United States. The survey of the life of the period, therefore, as 



