520 THE TERTIARY PERIOD 



The Wasatch Mountains and the High Plateaus of Utah and Ari- 

 zona were again upraised. The great mountain range of the St. 

 Elias Alps, in southeastern Alaska, was upheaved at this time, or 

 even later, and the mountains of British Columbia were probably 

 raised still higher. In Washington and Oregon the uplift was 

 small, but became much greater in southern California, reaching 

 2500 feet in the Monte Diablo range. On the eastern side of the 

 continent the uplift was on a much more restricted scale, not 

 generally exceeding 100 feet. The Florida anticline underwent 

 renewed compression, which increased its height ; in Georgia, the 

 continuation of this fold rose to 400 feet. The same movement 

 extended the coast of Mexico and Central America and brought 

 the continent to nearly its present outlines. 



It is not necessary to suppose that all these movements were 

 contemporaneous ; merely that they occurred, now in one place, 

 now in another, at or near the end of the Pliocene epoch. 



Foreign. — In Europe the sea generally retreated at the end of 

 the Miocene, leaving in the north only Belgium and a small part of 

 northern France under water. In England the sea advanced upon 

 the land ; while in the Mediterranean region large areas remained 

 under water, as in Spain, Algeria, nearly all of central and southern 

 Italy and Sicily, and Greece. In this region volcanic activity 

 was intense, and yEtna, Vesuvius, and the volcanoes of central 

 Italy had begun their operations. Many bodies of fresh and 

 brackish water existed over Europe, an older stage of the fresh- 

 water Pliocene occurring in southern France, near Athens, on the 

 Island of Samos, and in Persia. Over the region of the great Sar- 

 matian Sea of the Upper Miocene were numerous bodies of brack- 

 ish water, in which lived shells much like those which now inhabit 

 the Caspian. In India was a lake on the^south side of the Him- 

 alayas, the deposits of which now make the Siwalik Hills, famous 

 for their fossil bones ; and similar deposits with the same fossils 



occur in Borneo. 



Pliocene Life 



The life of the Pliocene is very modern in character. Little is 

 known of the vegetation in North America, but in Europe it is 



