Editorial Comment 
267 
land. The sea had penetrated between the British Isles and 
Norway so that the North sea had come into existence, but 
England was still a part of continental Europe though nearly 
of its present form and outline. 
An era of upheaval followed in pleistocene time when the 
coast coincided with the contour-line of 80 fathoms. Exten¬ 
sive alterations of the geography followed even this compara¬ 
tively slight change of level. This was the time when the 
Rhine flowed off the line of the present coast along the bed of 
the North sea, received the Thames, the Trent, the Forth and 
other rivers of England and Scotland as tributaries and itself 
reached the ocean between the Shetland isles and Norway. 
Near-by was the mouth of another great river which never had 
a name but which drained the present Denmark and the east¬ 
ern Baltic. The Seine then followed down the English Chan¬ 
nel and with another great river coming from the Irish Chan¬ 
nel entered the Atlantic one hundred miles off the Land’s End. 
The Atlantic was then well developed and extended over near¬ 
ly its present area. Yet if we disregard the contour-lines there 
is on the map little to suggest the British Isles of the present 
day. 
But with a change to the 40 fathom-line in later pleistocene 
times the outlines become familiar. England is nearly sepa¬ 
rated from France and the only connection of Ireland with the 
larger isle is by a roundabout passage through the west of 
Scotland. This was after the glacial era when the islands 
were receiving their population from the neighboring conti¬ 
nent and owing to the short length of this condition arid to the 
circuitous direction of the path the number has always been 
less than on the larger land mass. Indeed the paucity of rep¬ 
tiles in the Green Isle which is usually attributed to the kind 
intervention of St. Patrick is with more reason by geologists 
ascribed to the destruction of the natural bridge before they 
had had time to pass over it. 
We make no apology for presenting to our reader this sum¬ 
mary of the “Building of the British Isles.” It is the only 
part of the world whose geological atlas has yet been at¬ 
tempted, perhaps the only part for which any similar attempt 
is yet possible with reasonable prospect of success. We can¬ 
not now stop to point out the bearings of the facts and infer¬ 
ences brought forward by the author on several geological 
