and Orography of the Eartlis Surface. 7 



must have diminished in the hills from the beginning till now, 

 a fact which, on the other hand, conducts us to acknowledge 

 that the current of water, their destructions and alluvium, 

 must have been much greater the more we look back to these 

 primitive times. Probably about the chalk period the beds 

 of rivers may have become long enough to equalize the re- 

 sults of the greater angle of inclination with those of the 

 shorter beds of these. 



Let us try, lastly, to determine geognostically the chief 

 places of the continents in the various geological periods, in 

 going back from the present time to the oldest. 



As the subsidences increase always in a certain arithmetical 

 progression to the newer, and the elevations follow the same 

 scale, it is clear that the present world must have possessed 

 much more dry land at the beginning of things. 



In the alluvial time great countries have disappeared to 

 the NNW. and west of Europe ; this we may suspect by the 

 position of the greater parts of the low land, — by the chief sub- 

 sidences in Europe and Africa, — by the destruction of part of 

 the Tertiary beds and basins, — by many islands and many 

 shallows of certain seas, as between Norway and Spitzbergen, 

 in the German Sea, in the Gulf of Bevin, &c. But according 

 to our observations they may have existed already in the old 

 alluvial time {Proceed. Vienna Acad., January 1852). The 

 myth of the lost Atlantis may well be a true tradition. 



In North and South America similar relations indicate for 

 the same period of time subsidences in the north-east direc- 

 tion for North America, and in south-east and south-west for 

 South America. In the mean time was found in the Pacific, the 

 great equatorial cavity in Southern Asia, especially that 

 amongst the Indian Archipelago and east of Africa, — a subsi- 

 dence in the south-east direction. 



In the tertiary period numerous basins indicate many great 

 seas which did cover the lowest parts of the earth's surface, as 

 I have detailed it already in the Proceedings of the Vienna 

 Acad, for 1850, pp. 96-102 ; and also less completely else- 

 where. As these parts form the largest portions of the earth's 

 surface, this relation alone convinces us that much dry land 

 disappeared in later date under the sea. In the same 



