84 



ISLAND LIFE 



PART I 



have been other continents situated where we now find the 

 oceans, from which the sediments came to form the various 

 deposits we now see. This view was held by so acute and 

 learned a geologist as Sir Charles Lyell, who says : — 

 "Continents, therefore, although permanent for whole 

 geological epochs, shift their positions entirely in the course 

 of ages. "1 Mr. T. Mellard Reade, late President of the 

 Geological Society of Liverpool, so recently as 1878, says : — 

 " While believing that the ocean-depths are of enormous 

 age, it is impossible to resist other evidences that they 

 have once been land. The very continuity of animal and 

 vegetable life on the globe points to it. The molluscous 

 fauna of the eastern coast of North America is very simi- 

 lar to that of Europe, and this could not have happened 

 without littoral continuity, yet there are depths of 1,500 

 fathoms between these continents."^ It is certainly strange 

 that a geologist should not remember the recent and long- 

 continued warm climates of the Arctic regions, and see 

 that a connection of Northern Europe by Iceland with 

 Greenland and Labrador over a sea far less than a thousand 

 fathoms deep would furnish the "littoral continuity" re- 

 quired. Again, in the same pamphlet Mr. Reade says : — " It 

 can be mathematically demonstrated that the whole, or 

 nearly the whole, of the sea-bottom has been at one time or 

 other dry land. If it were not so, and the oscillations, of the 

 level of the land with respect to the sea were confined within 

 limits near the present continents, the results would have 

 been a gradual diminution instead of development of the 

 calcareous rocks. To state the case in common language, 

 the calcareous portion of the rocks would have been 

 washed out during the mutations, the destruction and re- 

 deposit of the continental rocks, and eventually deposited 

 in the depths of the immutable sea far from land. 

 Immense beds of limestone would now exist at the bottom 

 of the ocean, while the land would be composed of sand- 

 stones and argillaceous shales. The evidence of chemistry 

 thus confirms the inductions drawn from the distribution 

 of animal life upon the globe." 



^ Principles of Geology, 11th Ed., Vol, I., p. 258. 

 2 On Limestone as an Index of Geological Time. 



