THE ERIAN OR DEVONIAN FORESTS. 47 



the Great Lakes, was occupied by a vast inland sea, studded 

 with coral islands, the long Appalachian ridge had begun 

 to assume, along with the old Laurentian land, something 

 of the form of our present continent, and on the margins 

 of this Appalachian belt there were wide, swampy flats and 

 shallow-water areas, which, under the mild climate that 

 seems to have characterised this period, were admirably 

 suited to nourish a luxuriant vegetation. Under this 

 mild climate, also, it would seem that new forms of plants 

 were first introduced in the far north, where the long 

 continuance of summer sunlight, along with great warm th, 

 seems to have aided in their introduction and early ex- 

 tension, and thence made their way to the southward, a 

 process which, as Gray and others have shown, has also 

 occurred in later geological times. 



The America of this Erian age consisted during the 

 greater part of the period of a more or less extensive belt 

 of land in the north with two long tongues descending 

 from it, one along the Appalachian line in the east, the 

 other in the region west of the Rocky Mountains. On 

 the seaward sides of these there were low lands covered 

 with vegetation, while on the inland side the great in- 

 terior sea, with its verdant and wooded islands, realised, 

 though probably with shallower water, the conditions of 

 the modern archipelagoes of the Pacific. 



Europe presented conditions somewhat similar, having 

 in the earlier and middle portions of the period great sea 

 areas with insular patches of land, and later wide tracts 

 of shallow and in part enclosed water areas, swarming 

 with fishes, and having an abundant vegetation on their 

 shores. These were the conditions of the Eifel and 

 Devonshire limestones, and of the Old Red Sandstone of 

 Scotland, and the Kiltorcan beds of Ireland. In Europe 

 also, as in America, there were in the Erian age great 

 ejections of igneous rock. On both sides of the Atlantic 

 there were somewhat varied and changing conditions of 



