Parr III: Snor: iii. §2.] CRETACEOUS. ~ 831 
ranean basin. The hippurite limestones of the south and south-east of 
France are prolonged into Italy and Greece, whence they range into Asia 
Minor and into Asia. Cretaceous formations appear likewise in Sicily 
and cover a vast area in the north of Africa. In the desert region south 
of Algiers they extend as vast plateaux with sinuous lines of terraced 
escarpments.! 
_ India.—The hippurite limestone of south-eastern Europe is pro- 
longed into Asia Minor, and occupies a vast area in Persia. It has been 
detected here and there among the Himalaya Mountains in fragmentary 
outliers. Southward of these marine strata there appears to have existed 
in Cretaceous times a wide tract of land corresponding on the whole with 
the present area of the Indian peninsula, but not improbably stretchin g 
south-westwards so as to unite with Africa. On the south-eastern side 
of this area the Cretaceous sea extended, for near Trichinopoly and 
Pondicherry a series of marine deposits occur corresponding to the 
European Upper Cretaceous formations, with which they have 16 per 
cent. of fossil species in common. Similar strata with many of the 
same fossils occur on the African coast in Natal. The most remarkable 
episode of Cretaceous times in the Indian area was undoubtedly the 
colossal outpouring of the Deccan basalts. ‘These rocks, lying in hori- 
zontal, or nearly horizontal, sheets, attain a vertical thickness of from 
4000 to 5000 feet, and where thickest 6000 feet or more. They cover an 
area estimated at 200,000 square miles, though their limits have no 
doubt been reduced by denudation. Their oldest beds lie slightly 
unconformably on Cenomanian rocks, and in some places appear to be 
regularly interstratified with the uppermost Cretaceous strata. The 
occurrence of remains of fresh-water molluscs, land-plants, and insects, 
both in the lowest and highest parts of the volcanic series, proves that 
the lavas must have been subaerial. This is one of the most gigantic 
outpourings of volcanic matter in the world.’ 
North America.—Recent surveys of the western Territories of the 
United States and of British Columbia have greatly increased our know- 
ledge of the Cretaceous system on the American continent, where it is 
now known to cover a vast expanse of surface, and to reach an enormous 
thickness. Sparingly developed in the eastern States, from New Jersey 
into South Carolina, it spreads out over a wide area in the south, stretch- 
ing round the end of the long Paleozoic ridge from Georgia through 
Alabama and Tennessee to the Ohio; and reappearing from under the 
Tertiary formations on the west side of the Mississippi over a large space 
in Texas and the south-west. Its greatest development is reached in 
the western States and Territories of the Rocky Mountain region— 
“Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado, whence it ranges northward into British 
America, covering thousands of square miles of the prairie country 
between Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains, and extending westwards 
even as far as Queen Charlotte Islands, where it is well developed. It 
has a prodigious northward extension, for it has been detected in Arctic 
America near the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and in northern 
Greenland. 
Towards the south over the site of Texas, the Cretaceous sea appears to 
have been deeper and clearer than elsewhere in the American region, for 
1 Coquand, Description géol. et paléontol. de la région sud de la Province de Con- 
stantin, 1862; Rolland, Bull. Soc. Geol. France, 3e sér. ix. 508. 
2 Medlicott and Blanford, Geology of India, see ante, p. 258. 
