68 
GEOLOGY: C. SCHUCHERT 
3 feet. If, however, the greater estimate of 210,000 square miles be 
taken, then the oceanic level would be reduced about 15 feet and this 
should show in a well marked terrace all along the Atlantic shores. 
However, it is not only in the Azores that Termier seeks for Plato's 
lost land, but in the Canary and Cape Verde Islands as well. In other 
words, he believes that a continent greater than anything assumed 
for the Azores has very recently foundered, and therefore we should 
all the more easily observe an elevated strand-line along the Atlantic 
shores of North America. It is true that there are at least three Pleis- 
tocene elevated terraces recorded in Maryland, the highest and oldest 
one at 220 feet, known as the Talbot terrace, the middle Wicomico 
one at 100 feet, and the lowest and youngest at 40 feet, the Sunderland 
terrace. None of these, however, can have any connection with the 
foundering of Atlantis, as they are far older in age than Plato's account. 
On the other hand, these and the other Pleistocene terraces are due not 
only to isostatic and orogenic factors, but also to the climatic factor, 
as explained by Barrell.^ From this we see that if a continent situated 
in the Atlantic foundered into the depths of this ocean, it must have 
done so in far more ancient times than those of civilized man. Fur- 
thermore, the geology of the Azores shows that these islands are not 
parts of a foundered continent, but that they are volcanic islands that 
have arisen above the Atlantic bottom during the latter part of Cenozoic 
time. On the other hand, we learn from Gagel that five of the islands 
of the Cape Verde group and three of the Canaries have rocks that are 
unmistakably like those common to the continents. Taking into con- 
sideration also the living plants and animals of these islands, many of 
which are of European-Mediterranean affinities of late Tertiary time, 
we see that the evidence appears to indicate clearly that the Cape Verde 
and Canary Islands are fragments of a greater Africa. It is there- 
fore not to the north of the Pillars of Hercules that we should look for 
Atlantis, but to the southwest of the rock of Gibraltar. 
To follow out another line of evidence, the writer understands that 
petrographers know little from actual observations as to the behavior 
of flowing lavas under the sea, and whether the cooling phenomena 
and the formation of vitreous lavas would be the same there as beneath 
the atmosphere. At least three of them, however, are of the opinion 
that tachylyte would form equally as readily beneath the sea as on 
land. In answer to a request for data that might bear on this prob- 
lem. Doctor A. L. Day, director of the Geophysical Laboratory of 
the Carnegie Institution of Washington, directed my attention to a 
recently published paper by Perret.^ Last year the latter studied the 
