96 



ISLAND LIFE 



PART I 



mations. A few deposits of intermediate age have indeed 

 been found, but these have been generally allocated either 

 with the Chalk or the Eocene, leaving the gap almost as 

 pronounced as before. Now, what does this gap mean ? 

 It implies that when the deposition of the various Creta- 

 ceous beds of Europe came to an end they were raised 

 above the sea-level and subject to extensive denudation, 

 and that for a long but unknown period no extensive 

 portion of what is now European land was below the sea- 

 level. It was only when this period terminated that large 

 areas in several parts of Europe became submerged and 

 received the earliest Tertiary deposits known as Eocene. 

 If, therefore, Europe at the close of the Cretaceous period 

 was generally identical with what it is now, and perhaps 

 even more extensive, it is absurd to suppose that it was all, 

 or nearly all, under water during that period ; or in fact, 

 that any part of it was submerged, except those areas on 

 which we actually find Cretaceous deposits, or where we 

 have good reason to believe they have existed ; and even 

 these need not have been all under water at the same 

 time. 



The several considerations now adduced are, I think, 

 sufficient to show that the view put forth by some natural- 

 ists (and which has met with a somewhat hasty acceptance 

 by geologists) that our white chalk is an oceanic formation 

 strictly comparable with that now forming at depths of a 

 thousand fathoms and upwards in the centre of the 

 Atlantic, gives a totally erroneous idea of the actual con- 

 dition of Europe during that period. Instead of being a 

 wide ocean, with a few scattered islands, comparable to 

 some parts of the Pacific, it formed as truly a portion of the 

 great northern continent as it does now, although the in- 

 land seas of that epoch may have been more extensive 

 and more numerous than they are at the present day.^ 



^ In his lecture on Geographical Evolution (which was published after the • 

 greater part of this chapter had been written) Sir Archibald Geikie expresses 

 views in complete accordance with those here advocated. He says : — " The 

 next long era, the Cretaceous, was more remarkable for slow accumulation 

 of rock under the sea than for the formation of new land. During that 

 time the Atlantic sent its waters across the whole of Europe and into Asia. 

 But they were probably nowhere more than a few hundred feet deep over 



