GEOLOGY: C. SCHUCHERT 
67 
then, that the entire region north of the Azores and perhaps the very region 
of the Azores, of which they may be only the visible ruins, was very recently 
submerged, probably during the epoch which the geologists call the present 
because it is so recent, and which for us, the living beings of today, is the 
same as yesterday. 
Now let us see what are the geologic conditions of the Azores. GageP 
tells us that this group of nine islands rises out of the Atlantic from 
depths of 10,945 feet to elevations of 3250 feet, and in one case even 
to 8040 feet above the surface of the sea. There are here no old sedi- 
mentary or old eruptive formations and the islands appear to be of 
very recent volcanic origin. Among the volcanic materials have been 
found only inclusions of fossiliferous middle Miocene limestone. He 
concludes that they are volcanic islands of Tertiary age that are made 
up in the main of trachytic and basaltic lavas, that these have probably 
built themselves up to elevations of from 16,250 to over 21,125 feet, 
and that some of these volcanoes have been active during the past 
four centuries. 
If the region of the Azores and that to the north of them for many 
hundreds of miles had been parts of a great continent now sunk deep into 
the Atlantic, there should be some evidence of this sinking shown in a 
well marked elevated sea terrace all along the Atlantic, for it is postulated 
that Atlantis sank when humanity had attained a high state of civiliza- 
tion; in fact the time when the warriors, according to Plato, came from 
Atlantis cannot be more ancient than Egyptian history. In other 
words, Plato's Atlantis must have disappeared not more than 8000 to 
10,000 years ago, for the priests of Egypt told ''of a singularly powerful 
army, an army which came from the Atlantic and which had the ef- 
frontery to invade Europe and Asia .... Later, with great 
earthquakes and inundations, in a single day and one fatal night, all 
who had been warriors against you [Athens] were swallowed up. The 
island of Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea." 
The area of land supposed by Termier to have sunk is not less than 
40,000 square miles, and if we accept his greater supposition that it 
included also the region to the north, the mass would be not less than 
700 miles long by 300 miles wide, or 210,000 square miles. Now let 
us see how much water the sinking of such masses is equal to, with a 
view of learning how much the eustatic strand-line of all oceans would 
be lowered. Murray estimates the superficial area of the oceans as 
about 139,000,000 square miles, and the mean depth as 13,000 feet. 
Therefore to sink a mass so small as 40,000 square miles to a depth of 
10,000 feet would only lower the general strand-line a little more than 
