TERTIARY PERIOD. 533 



of the Tertiary period its full expansion ; and even these border 

 regions received afterwards but small additions. The progress 

 from the first was uniform and systematic ; the land was at all 

 times simple in outline, and its enlargement took place outward 

 with almost the regularity of an exogenous plant. 



2. European Geography. — In the earliest epoch of the Tertiary 

 in Europe there appears to have been, as has been observed by 

 others, first, an emergence of the land from the Cretaceous seas, 

 when the Chalk formation was eroded at surface and a flint con- 

 glomerate in some places formed. It may be that the land emerged 

 at that time to a considerable elevation, and that this emergence 

 occasioned in part the cold climate and cold oceans alluded to on 

 p. 504 as the cause of the extinction of Cretaceous species. The 

 return of the land to the sea-level, and in some places beneath it, 

 would commence the formations of the marine and estuary Tertiary 

 of the succeeding epoch; and a still more general submergence 

 would bring about the state when the great Nummulitic beds of the 

 Middle Eocene were forming over so large a part of Europe, Africa, 

 and Asia, even over regions which are now occupied by the lofty 

 mountains of these continents. At this epoch Europe was again an 

 archipelago, as in the Cretaceous period. The Paris basin was one 

 of its great estuaries, varying between fresh and marine waters 

 with changes of level and changing barriers. 



After the Eocene, in Europe (as well as in America), the marine 

 deposits had much smaller extent, and the continent was mostly 

 dry land. But the ocean-border, instead of having the American 

 simplicity, had numerous deep indentations and winding estuaries. 



The elevation of the Pyrenees took place in the Middle Eocene, 

 after the accumulation of the Nummulitic beds ; and the same was 

 true of the Julian Alps, and of the Apennines, Carpathians, and 

 other heights in eastern Europe. The Nummulitic strata have 

 now a height of 10,000 feet in the Alps, and 9000 in the Pyrenees. 

 The elevation of the chain of Corsica, and some minor disturbances 

 in Italy and other parts of Europe, are referred to the close of the 

 Eocene. The western Alps, ranging N. 26° E., which include 

 Mt. Blanc, Mt. Rosa, etc., were raised, according to Elie de Beau- 

 mont, after the deposition of part or all of the Miocene ; for the 

 Molasse of this region was raised or disturbed by the uplift, and 

 not the Pliocene. The elevation of the eastern Alps from Valais 

 to St. Gothard along the Bernese Alps and eastward to Austria, 

 ranging E. 16° N., is attributed by the same geologist to the close 

 of the Pliocene, as it lifted the Pliocene but did not disturb the 

 Post-tertiary. Even in the later part of the Pliocene era there was 



