Chapter I: HAVE endeavored, in the preceding part of my work, to explain and (13)

Nothing appears to corroborate p 279 the theoretical views that have been started regarding the simplicity of primitive forms of organic life, ow that vegetable preceded animal life, and that the former was necessarily dependent upon the latter. The existence of races of men inhabiting the icy regions of the North Polar lands, and whose nutriment is solely derived from fish and cetaceans, shows the possibility of maintaining life independently of vegetable substances. After the devonian system and the mountain limestone, we come to a formation, the botanical analysis of which has made such brilliant advances in modern times.*

[footnote] *By the important labors of Count Sternberg, Adolphe Brongniart, Goppert, and Lindley.

The coal measures contain not only fern-like cryptogamic plants and phanerogamic monocotyledons (grasses, yucc-like Liliaceae and palms), but also gymnospermic dicotyledons (Coniferae and Cycadeae), amounting in all to nearly 400 species, as characteristic of the coal formations. Of these we will only enumerate arborescent Calamites and Lycopodiaceae, scaly Lepidodendra, Sigillariae, which attain a height of sixty feet, and are sometimes found standing upright, being distinguished by a double system of vascular bundles, cactus-like Stigmariae, a great number of ferns, in some cases the stems, and in others the fronds alone being found, indicating by their abundance the insular form of the dry land,* Cycadeae** especially palms, although fewer in number.***

[footnote] *See Robert Brown's 'Botany of Congo', p. 42, and the Memoir of the unfortunate E'Urville, 'De la Distribution des Fougeres sur la Surface du Globe Terrestre'.

[footnote] **Such are the Cycadeae discovered by Count Sternberg in the old carboniferous formation at Radnitz, in Bohemia, and described by Corda (two species of Cycatides and Zamites Cordai. See Goppert, 'Fossile Cycadeen in den Arbeiten der Schles. Gesellschaft, fur waterl. Cultur im Jahr' 1843, s. 33, 37, 40 and 50). A Cycadea (Pterophyllum gonorchachis, Gopp.) has also been found in the carboniferous formations in Upper Silesia, at Konigshutte.

[footnote] ***Lindley, 'Fossil Flora', No. xv., p. 163.

Asterophyllites, having whorl-like leaves, and allied to the Naiades, with araucaria-like Coniferae',* which exhibit faint traces of annual rings.

[footnote] *'Fossil Coniferae', in Buckland's 'Geology', p. 483-490. Witham has the great merit of having first recognized the existence of Coniferae in the early vegetation of the old carboniferous formation. Almost all the trunks of trees found in this formation were previously regarded as palms. The species of the genus 'Araucaria' are, however, not peculiar to the coal formations of the British Islands; they likewise occur in Upper Silesia.

This difference of character from our present vegtation, minifested in the vegetative forms which were so luxuriously developed on the drier p 280 and more elevated portions of the old red sandstone, was maintained through all the subsequent epochs to the most recent chalk formations; amid the peculiar characteristics exhibited in the vegetable forms contained in the coal measures, there is, however, a strikingly-marked prevalence of the same families, if not of the same species,* in all parts of the earth as it then existed, as in New Holland, Canada, Greenland, and Melville Island.

[footnote[ *Adolphe Brongniart, 'Prodrome d'une Hist. des Vegetaux Fossiles', p. 179; buckland, 'Geology', p. 479; Endlicher and Unger, 'Grundzuge der Botanik', 1843, s. 455.

The vegetation of the primitive period exhibits forms which, from their simultaneous affinity with several families of the present world, testify that many intermediate links must have become extinct in the scale of organic development. Thus, for example, to mention only two instances, we would notice the Lepidodendra, which, according to Lindley, occupy a place between the Coniferae and the Lycopodiaceae*, and the Araucariae and pines, which exhibit some peculiarities in the union of their vascular bundles.

[footnote] *"By means of Lepidodendron, a better passage is established from flowering to flowerless plants than by either Equisetum or Cycas, or any other known genus." -- Lindley and Hutton, 'Fossil Flora', vol. ii., p. 53.

Even if we limit our consideration to the present world alone, we must regard as highly important the discovery of Cycadeae and Coniferae side by side with Sagenariae and Lepidodendra in the ancient coal measures. The Coniferae are not ony allied to Cupuliferae and Betulinae, with which we find them associated in lignite formations, but also with Lycopodiaceae. The family of the sago-like Cycadeae approaches most nearly to palms in its external appearance, while these plants are specially allied to Coniferae in respect to the structure of their blossoms and seed.*

[footnote] *Kunth, 'Anordnung der Pflanzenfamilien', in his 'Handb. der Botanik', s. 307 und 314.

Where many beds of coal are superposed over one another, the families and species are not always blended, being most frequently grouped together in separate genera; Lycopodiaceae and certain ferns being alone found in one bed, and Stigmariae and Sigillariae in another. In order to give some idea of the luxuriance of the vegetation of the primitive world, and of the immense masses of vegetable matter which was doubtlessly accumulated in currents and converted in a moist condition into coal,* I would instance the Saarbrucker coal measures, p 281 where 120 beds are superposed on one another, exclusive of a great many which are less than a foot in thickness; the coal beds at Johnstone, in Scotland, and those in the Creuzot, in Burgundy, are some of them, respectively, thirty and fifty feet in thickness,** while in the forests of our temperate zones, the carbon contained in the trees growing over a certain area would hardly suffice, in the space of a hundred years, to cover it with more than a stratum of seven French lines in thickness.***

[footnote] That coal has not been formed from vegetable fibers charred by fire, but that it has more probably been produced in the moist way by the action of sulphuric acid, is strikingly demonstrated by the excellent observation made by Goppert (Karsten, 'Archiv fu Mineralogie', bd. xviii., s. 530), on the conversion of a fragment of amber-tree into black coal. The coal and the unaltered amber lay side by side. Regarding the part which the lower forms of vegetation may have had in the formation of coal beds, see Link, in the 'Abhandl. der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften', 1838, s. 38.

[footnote] **[The actual total thickness of the different beds in England varies considerably in different districts, but appears to amount in the Lancashire coal field to as much as 150 feet. -- Ansted's 'Ancient World', p. 78. For an enumeration of the thickness of coal measures in America and the Old Continent, see Mantell's 'Wonders of Geology', vol. ii., p. 60.] -- Tr.

[footnote] ***See the accurate labors of Chevandier, in the 'Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences', 1844, t. xviii., Part i., p. 285. In comparing this bed of carbon, seven lines in thickness, with beds of coal, we must not omit to consider the enormous pressure to which the latter have been subjected from superimposed rock, and which manifests itself in the flattened form of the stems of the trees found in these subterranean regions. "The so-called 'wood-hills' discovered in 1806 by Sirowatskoi, on the south coast of the island of New Siberia, consist, according to Hedenstrom, of horizontal strata of sandstone, aolternating with bituminous trunks of trees, forming a mound thirty fathoms in neight; at the summit the stems were in a vertical position. The bed of driftwood is visible at five wersts' distance." -- See Wrangel, 'Reise Iangs der Nordkuste von Siberien, in den Jahren' 1820-24, th. i., s. 102.

Near the mouth of the Mississippi, and in the "wood hills" of the Siberian Polar Sea, described by Admiral Wrangel, the vast number of trunks of trees accumulated by river and sea water currents affords a striking instance of theenormous quantities of drift-wood which must have favored the formation of carboniferous deposition in the island waters and insular bays. There can be no doubt that these beds owe a considerable portion of the substances of which they consist to grasses, small branching shrubs, and cryptogamic plants.

The association of palms and Coniferae, which we have indicated as being characteristic of the coal formations, is discoverable throughout almost all formations to the tertiary period. In the present condition of the world, these genera p 282 appear to exhibit no tendency whatever to occur associated together. We have so accustomed ourselves, although erroneously, to regard Coniferae as a northern form, that I experienced a feeling of surprise when, in ascending from the shores of the South Pacific toward Chilpansingo and the elevated valleys of Mexico, between the 'Venta de la Moxonera' and the 'Alto de los Caxones', 4000 feet above the level of the sea, I rode a whole day through a dense wood of Pinus occidentalis, where I observed that these trees, which are so similar to the Weymouth pine, were associated with fan palms* ('Corypha dulcis'), swarming with brightly-colored parrots.

[[footnote] *This corypha is the 'soyate' (in Aztec, zoyatl), or the 'Palma dulce' of the natives. See Humboldt and Bonplaud, 'Synopsis Plant. AEquinoct. Orbis Novi', t. i., p. 302. Professor Buschmann, who is profoundly acquainted with the American languages, remarks, that the 'Palma soyate' is so named in Yepe's 'Vocabulario de la Lengua Othomi', and that the Aztec word zoyatl (Molina, 'Vocabulario en Lengua Mexicana y Castellana', p. 25) recurs in names of places, such as Zoyatitlan and Zoyapanco, near Chiapa.

South America has oaks, but not a single species of pine; and the first time that I again saw the familiar form of a fir-tree, it was thus associated with the strange appearance of the fan palm.*

[footnote] *Near Baracoa and Cayos de Moya. See the Admiral's journal of the 25th and 27th of November, 1492, and Humboldt, 'Examen Critique de l'Hist. de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent', t. ii., p. 252, and 5. iii., p. 23. Columbus, who invariably paid the most remarkable attention to all natural objects, was the first to observe the difference between 'Podocarpus' and 'Pinus'. "I find," said he, "en la tierra aspera del Cibao pinos que no Ilevan pinas (fir cones), pero portal orden compuestos por naturaleza, que (los frutos) parecen azeytunas del Axarafe de Sevilla." The great botanist, Richard, when he published his excellent Memoir on Cycadeae and Coniferae, little imagined that before the time of L'Heritier, and even before the end of the fifteenth century, a navigator had separated 'Podocarpus' from the Abietineae.

Christopher Columbus, in his first voyage of discovery, saw Coniferae and palms growing together on the northeastern extremity of the island of Cuba, likewise within the tropics, and scarcely above the level of the sea. This acute observer, whom nothing escaped, mentions the fact in his journal as a remarkable circumstance, and his friend Anghiera, the secretary of Frdinand the Catholic, remarks with astonishment "that 'palmeta' and 'pineta' are found associated together in the newly-discovered land." It is a matter of much importance to geology to compare the present distribution of plants over the earth's surface with that exhibited in the fossil floras of the primitive world. The temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, which is so rich in seas and islands, and where p 283 tropical forms blend so remarkably with those of colder parts of the earth, presents according to Darwin's beautiful and animated descriptions,* the most instructive materials for the study of the present and the past geography of plants.

[footnote] *Charles Darwin, 'Journal of the Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle', 1839, p. 271.

The history of the primordial ages is, in the strict sense of the word, a part of the history of plants.

Cycadeae, which, from the number of their fossil species, must have occupied a far more important part in the extinct than in the present vegetable world, are associated with the nearly allied Coniferae from the coal formations upward. They are almost wholly absent in the epoch of the variegated sandstone which contains Coniferae of rare and luxuriant structure ('Voltizia, Haidingera, Albertia'); the Cycadeae, however, occur most frequently in the keuper and lias strata, in which more than twenty different forms appear. In the chalk, marine plants and naiades predominate. The forests of Cycadeae of the Jura formations had, therefore, long disappeared, and even in the more ancient tertiary formations they are quite subordinate to the Coniferae and palms.*

[footnote] *Goppert describes three other Cycadeae (species of Cycadites and Pterophyllum), found in the brown carboniferous schistose clay of Alt-sattel and Commotau, in Bohemia. They very probably belong to the Eocene Period. Goppert, 'Fossile Cycadeen', s. 61.

The lignites, or beds of brown coal* which are present in all divisions of the tertiary period, present, among the most ancient cryptogamic land plants, some few palms, many Coniferae having distinct annual rings, and foliaceous shrubs of a more or less tropical character.

[footnote] *['Medals of Creation', vol. i., ch. v., etc. 'Wonders of Geology', vol. i., p. 278, 392.] -- Tr.

In the middle tertiary period we again find palms and Cycadeae fully established, and finally a great similarity with our existing flora, manifested in the sudden and abundant occurrence of our pines and firs, Cupuliferae, maples, and poplars. The dicotyledonous stems found in lignite are occasionally distinguished by colossal size and great age. In the trunk of a tree found at Bonn, Noggerath counted 792 annual rings.*

[footnote] *Buckland, 'Geology', p. 509.

In the north of France, at Yseux, near Abbeville, oaks have been discovered in the turf moors of the Somme which measured fourteen feet in diameter, a thickness which is very remarkable in the Old Continent and without the tropics. According to Goppert's excellent investigations, which, it is hoped, may soon be illustrated by plates, it would appear that "all the amber of the Baltic comes from p 284 a coniferous tree, which, to judge by the still extant remains of wood and the bark at different ages, approaches very nearly to our white and red pines, although forming a distinct species. The amber-tree of the ancient world ('Pinites succifer') abounded in resin to a degree far surpassing that manifested by any extant coniferous tree; for not only were large masses of amber deposited in and upon the bark, but also in the wood itself, following the course of the medullary rays, which, together with ligneous cells, are still discernible under the microscope, and peripherally between the rings, being some times both yellow and white."

"Among the vegetable forms inclosed in amber are male and femald blossoms of our native needle-wood trees and Cupuliferae, while fragments which are recognized as belonging to thuia, cupressus, ephedera, and castania vesca, blended with those of junipers and firs, indicate a vegetation different from that of the coasts and plains of the Baltic."*

[footnote] *{The forests of amber-pines, 'Pinites succifer', were in the southeastern part of what is now the bed of the Baltic, in about 55 degrees N. lat., and 37 degrees E. long. The different colors of amber are derived from local chemical admixture. The amber contains fragments of vegetable matter, and from these it has been ascertained tht the amber-pine forests contained four other species of pine (besides the 'Pinites succier'), several cypresses, yews, and junipers, with oaks, poplars, beeches, etc. -- altogether forty-eight species of trees and shrubs, constituting a flora of North American chracter. There are also some ferns, mosses, fungi, and liverworts. See Professor Goppert, 'Geol. Trans.', 1845. Insects, spiders, small crustaceans, leaves, and fragments of vegetable tissue, are imbedded in some of the masses. Upward of 800 species of insects have been observed; most of them belong to species, and even genera, that appear to be distinct from any now known, but others are nearly related to indigenous species, and some are identical with existing forms, that inhabit more southern climes. -- 'Wonders of Geology', vol. i., p. 242, etc.] -- Tr.

We have now passed through the whole series of formations comprised in the geological portion of the present work, proceeding from the oldest erupted rock and the most ancient sedimentary formations to the alluvial land on which are scattered those large masses of rock, the causes of whose general distribution have been so long and variously discussed, and which are, in my opinion, to be ascribed rather to the penetration and violent outpouring of pent-up waters by the elevation of mountain chains than to the motion of floating blocks of ice.*

[footnote] *Leopold von Buch, in the 'Abhandl. der Akad. der Wissensch. zu Berlin', 1814-15, s. 161; and in Poggend., 'Annalen', bd. ix., s. 575; Elie de Beaumont, in the 'Annales des Sciences Naturelles', t. xix., p. 60.

The most ancient structures of the transition formation p 285 with which we are acquainted are slate and graywacke, which contain some remains of sea weeds from the silurian or cambrian sea. On what did these so-called 'most ancient' formations rest, if gneiss and mica schist must be regarded as changed sedimentary strata? Dare we hazard a conjecture on that which can not be an object of actual geognostic observation? According to an ancient Indian myth, the earth is borne up by an elephant, who in his turn is supported by a gigantic tortoise, in order that he may not fall; but it is not permitted to the credulous Brahmins to inquire on what the tortoise rests. We venture here upon a somewhat similar problem, and are prepared to meet with opposition in our endeavors to arrive at its soluion. In the first formation of the planets, as we stated in the astronomical portion of this work, it is probable that nebulous rings revolving round the sun were agglomerated into spheroids, and consolidated by a gradual condensation proceeding from the exterior toward the center. What we term the ancient silurian strata are thus only the upper portions of the solid crust of the earth. The erupted rocks which have broken through and upheaved these strata have been elevated from depths that are wholly inaccessible to our research; they must, therefore, have existed under the silurian strata, and been composed of the same association of minerals which we term granite, augite, and quartzose porphyry, when they are made known to us by eruption through the surface. Basing our inquiries on analogy, we may assume that the substances which fill up deep fissures and traverse the sedimentary strata are merely the ramifications of a lower deposit. The foci of active volcanoes are situated at enormous depths, and judging from the remarkable fragments which I have found in various parts of the earth incrusted in lava currents, I should deem it more than probable tht a primordial granite rock forms the substratum of the whole stratified edifice of fossil remains.*

[footnote] *See Elie de Beaumont, 'Descr. Geol. de la France', t. i., p. 65; Beaudant, 'Geologie', 1844, p. 269.

Basalt containing olivine first shows itself in the period of the chalk trachyte still later, while eruptions of granite belong, as we learn from the products of their metamorphic action to the epoch of the oldest sedimentary strata of the transition formation. Where knowledge can not be attained from immediate perceptive evidence, we may be allowed from induction, no less than from a careful comparison of facts, to hazard a conjecture by which granite would be restored p 286 to a portion of its contested right and title to be considered as a 'primordial' rock.

The recent progress of geognosy, that is to say, the more extended knowledge of the geognostic epochs characterized by differences of mineral formations, by the peculiarities and succession of the organisms contained within them, and by the position of the strata, whether uplifted or inclined horizontally, leads us, by means of the causal connection existing among all natural phenomena, to the distribution of solids and fluids into the continents and seas which constitute the upper crust of our planet. We here touch upon a point of contact between geological and geographical geognosy which would constitute the complete history of the form and extent of continents. The limitation of the solid by the fluid parts of the earth's surface and their mutual relations of area, have varied very considerably in the long series of geognostic epochs. They were very different, for instance, when carboniferous strata were horizontally deposited on the inclined beds of the mountain limestone and old red sandstone; when lias and oolite lay on a substratum of keuper and muschelkalk, and the chalk rested on the slopes of green sandstone and Jura limestone. If, with Elie de Beaumont, we term the waters in which the Jura limestone and chalk formed a soft deposit the 'Jurassic or oolitic', and the 'cretaceous seas', the outlines of these formations will indicate, for the two corresponding epochs, the boundaries between the already dried land and the ocean in which these rocks were forming. An ingenious attempt has been made to craw maps of this physical portion of primitive geography and we may consider such diagrams as more correct than those of the wanderings of Io or the Homeric geography, since the latter are merely graphic representations of mythical images, while the former are based upon positive facts deduced from the science of geology.

The results of the investigations made regarding the areal relations of the solid portions of our planet are as follows: in the most ancient times, during the silurian and devonian transition epochs, and in the secondary formations, including the trias, the continental portions of the earth were limited to insular groups covered with vegetation; these islands at a subsequent period became united, giving rise to numerous lakes and deeply-indented bays; and finally, when the chains of the Pyrenees, Apennines, and Carpathian Mountains were elevated about the period of the more ancient tertiary formations, large continents appeared, having almost their present p 287 size.*

[footnote] *[These movements, described in so few words, were doubtless going on for many thousands and tens of thousands of revolutions of our planet. They were accompanied, also, by vast but slow changes of other kinds. The expansive force employed in lifting up, by mighty movements, the northern portion of the continent of Asia, found partial vent; and from partial subsqueous fissures there were poured out the tabular masses of basalt occurring in Central India, while an extensive area of depression in the Indian Ocean, marked by the coral islands of the Laccadives, the Maldives, the great Chagos Bank, and some others, were in the course of depression by a counteracting movement. -- Ansted's 'Ancient World', p. 346, etc.] -- Tr.

In the silurian epoch, as well as in that in which the Cycadeae flourished in such abundance, and gigantic saurians were living, the dry land, from pole to pole, was probably less than it now is in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. We shall see, in a subsequent part of this work, how this preponderating quantity of water, combined with other causes, must have contributed to raise the temperature and induce a greater uniformity of climate. Here we would only remark in considering the gradual extension of the dry land, that, shortly before the 'disturbances' which at longer or shorter intervals caused the sudden destruction of so great a number of colossal vertebrata in the 'diluvial period', some parts of the present continental masses must have been completely separated from one another. There is a great similarity in South America and Australia between still living and extinct species of animals. In New Holland, fossil remains of the kangaroo have been found, and in New Zealand the semi-foxxilized bones of an enormous bird, resembling the ostrich, the dinornis of Owen,* which is nearly allied to the present spteryx, and but little so to the recently extinct dronte (dodo) of the island of Rodriguez.

[[footnote] *[See 'American Journal of Science', vol. xiv., p. 187; and 'Medals of Creation', vol. ii., p. 817; 'Trans. Zoolog. Society of London', vol. ii; 'Wonders of Geology', vol. i., p. 129.] -- Tr.

The form of the continental portions of the earth may, perhaps, in a great measure, owe their elevation above the surrounding level of the water to the eruption of quartzose porphyry, which overthrew with violence the first great vegetation from which the matrial of our present coal measures was formed. The portions of the earth's surface which we term plains are nothing more than the broad summits of hills and mountains whose bases rest on the bottom of the ocean. Every plain is, therefore, when considered according to its submarine relations, an 'elevated plateau', whose inequalities have been covered over by horizontal deposition of new sedimentary formations and by the accumulation of alluvium.

p 288 Among the general subjects of contemplation appertaining to a work of this nature, a prominent place must be given, first, in the consideration of the 'quantity' of the land raised above the level of the sea, and next, to the individual configuration of each part, either in relation to horizontal extension (relations of form) or to vertical elevation (hypsometrical relations of mountain-chains). Our planet has two envelopes, of which one, which is general -- the atmosphere -- is composed of an elastic fluid, and the other -- the sea -- is only locally distributed, surrounding, and therefore modifying, the form of the land. These two envelopes of air and sea constitute a natural whole, on which depend the difference of climate on the earth's surface, according to the relative extension of the aqueous and solid parts, the form and aspect of the land, and the direction and elevation of mountain chains. A knowledge of the reciprocal action of air, sea, and land teaches us that great meteorological phenomena can not be comprehended when considered independently of geognostic relations. Meteorology, as well as the geography of plants and animals, has only begun to make actual progress since the mutual dependence of the phenomena to be investigated has been fully recognized. The word climate has certainly special reference to the character of the atmosphere, but this character is itself dependent on the perpetually concurrent influences of the ocean, which is universally and deeply agitated by currents having a totally opposite temperature, and of radiation from the dry land, which varies greatly in form, elevation, color, and fertility, whether we consider its bare, rocky portions, or those that are covered with arborescent or herbaceous vegetation.

In the present condition of the surface of our planet, the area of the solid is to that of the fluid parts as 1:2 4/5ths (according to Rigaud, as 100:270).*

[footnote] *See 'Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society', vcl. vi., Part ii., 1837, p. 297. Other writers have given the ratio as 100:284.

The islands form scarcely 1/22d of the continental masses, which are so unequally divided that they consist of three times more land in the northern than in the southern hemisphere; the latter being, therefore, pre-eminently oceanic. From 40 degrees south latitude to the Antarctic pole the earth is almost entirely covered with water. The fluid element predominates in like manner between the eastern shores of the Old and the western shores of the New Continent, being only interspersed with some few insular groups. The learned hydrographer Fleurieu has very justly named this p 289 vast oceanic basis, which, under the tropics, extends over 145ºdegrees of longitude, the 'Great Ocean', in contradistinction to all other seas. The southern and western hemispheres (reckoning the latter from the meridian of Teneriffe) are therefore more rich in water than in any other region of the whole earth.

These are the main points involved in the consideration of the relative quantity of land and sea, a relation which exercises so important an influence on the distribution of temperature, the variations in atmospheric pressure, the direction of the winds, and the quantity of moisture contained in the air, with which the development of vegetation is so essentially connected. When we consider that nearly three fourths of the upper surface of our planet are covered with water,* we shall be less surprised at the imperfect condition of meteorology before the beginning of the present century, since it is only during the subsequent period that numerous accurate observations on the temperature of the sea at different latitudes and at different seasons have been made and numerically compared together.

[footnote] *In the Middle Ages, the opinion prevailed that the sea covered one seventh of the surface of the globe, an opinion which Cardinal d'Ailly ('Imago Mundi', cap. 8) founded on the fourth apocryphal book of Esdras. Columbus, who derived a great portion of his cosmographical knowledge from the cardinal's work, was much interested in upholding this idea of the smallness of the sea, to which the misunderstood expression of "the ocean stream" contributed not a little. See Humboldt, 'Examen Critique de l'Hist. de la Geographie', t. i., p. 186.

The horizontal configuration of continents in their general relations of extension was already made a subject of intellectual contemplation by the ancient Greeks. Conjectures were advanced regarding the maximum of the extension from west to east, and Dicaearchus placed it, according to the testimony of Agathemerus, in the latitude of Rhodes, in the direction of a line passing from the Pillars of Hercules to Thine. This line, which has been termed 'the parallel of the diaphragm of Dicaearchus', is laid down with an astronomical accuracy of position, which, as I have stated in another work, is well worthy of exciting surprise and admiration.*

[footnote] *Agathemerus, in Hudson, 'Geographi Minores', t. ii., p. 4. See Humboldt, 'Asie Centr.', t. i., p. 120-125.

Strabo, who was probably influenced by Eratosthenes, appears to have been so firmly convinced that this parallel of 36 degrees was the maximum of the extension of the then existing world, that he supposed it had some intimate connection with the form of the earth, and therefore places under this line the continent whose existence p 290 he divined in the northern hemisphere, between Theria and the coasts of Thine.*

[footnote] *Strabo, lib. i., p. 65, Casaub. See Humboldt, 'Examen Crit.', t. i., p. 152.

As we have already remarked, one hemisphere of the earth (whether we divide the sphere through the equator or through the meridian of Teneriffe) has a much greater expansion of elevated land than the opposite one: these two vast ocean-girt tracts of land, which we term the eastern and western, or the Old and New Continents, present, however, conjointly with the most striking contrasts of configuration and position of their axes, some similarities of form, especially with reference to the mutual relations of their opposite coasts. In the eastern continent, the predominating direction -- the position of the major axis -- inclines from east to west (or, more correctly speaking, from southwest to northeast), while in the western continent it inclines from south to north (or, rather, from south-southeast to north-northwest). Both terminate to the north at a parallel coinciding nearly with that of 70ºdegrees, while they extend to the south in pyramidal points, having submarine prolongations of islands and shoals. Such, for instance, are the Archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, the Lagullas Bank south of the Cape of Good Hope, and Van Diemen's Land, separated from New Holland by Bass's Straits. Northern Asia extends to the above parallel at Cape Taimura, which, according to Krusenstern, is 78 degrees 16', while it falls below it from the mouth of the Great Tschukotsehja River eastward to Behring's Straits, in the eastern extremity of Asia -- Cook's East Cape -- which, according to Beechey, is only 66 degrees E.*

[footnote] *On the mean latitude of the Northern Asiatic shores, and the true name of Cape Taimura (Cape Siewere-Wostotschnoi), and Cape Northeast (Schalagskoi Mys), see Humboldt, 'Asie Centrale', t. iii., p. 35, 37.

The northern shore of the New Continent follows with tolerable exactness the parallel of 70 degrees, since the lands to the north and south of Barrow's Strait, from Boothia Felix and Victoria Land, are merely detached islands.

The pyramidal configuration of all the southern extremities of continents belongs to the 'similtudines physicae in configuratione mundi', to which Bacon already called attention in his 'Novum Organon', and with which Reinhold Foster, one of Cook's companions in his second voyage of circumnavigation, connected some ingenious considerations. On looking eastward from the meridian of Teneriffe, we perceive that the southern extremities of the three continents, viz., Africa as the extreme p 291 of the Old World, Australia, and South America, successively approach nearer toward the south pole. New Zealand, whose length extends fully 12 degrees of latitude, forms an intermediate link between Australia and South America, likewise terminating in an island, New Leinster. It is also a remarkable circumstance that the greatest extension toward the south falls in the Old Continent, under the same meridian in which the extremest projection toward the north pole is manifested. This will be perceived on comparing the Cape of Good Hope and the Lagullas Bank with the North Cape of Europe, and the peninsula of Malacca with Cape Taimura in Siberia.*

[footnote] *Humboldt, 'Asie Centrale', t. i., p. 198-200. The southern point of America, and the Archipelago which we call Terra del Fuego, lie in the meridian of the northwestern part of Baffin's Bay, and of the great polar land, whose limits have not as yet been ascertained, and which, perhaps, belongs to West Greenland.

We know not whether the poles of the earth are surrounded by land or by a sea of ice. Toward the north pole the parallel of 82 degrees 55' has been reached, but toward the south pole only that of 78 degrees 10'.

The pyramidal terminations of the great continents are variously repeated on a smaller scale, not only in the Indian Ocean and in the peninsulas of Arabia, Hindostan, and Malacca, but also, as was remarked by Eratosthenes and Polybius, in the Mediterranean, where these writers had ingeniously compared together the forms of the Iberian, Italian, and Hellenic peninsulas.*

[footnote] *Strabo, lib. ii., p. 92, 108, Cassaub.

Europe, whose area is five times smaller than that of Asia, may almost be regarded as a multifariously articulated western peninsula of the more compact mass of the ontinent of Asia, the climatic relations of the former being to those of the latter as the peninsula of Brittany is to the rest of France.

[footnote] *Humboldt, 'Asie Centrale', t. iii., p. 25. As early as the year 1817, in my work 'De distributione Geographica Plantarum, secundum caels temperiem et altitudinem Montium', I directed attention to the important influence of compact and of deeply-articulated continents on climate and human civilization, "Regiones vel per sinus lunatos in longa cornua porrectae, angulois littorum recessibus quasi membratim discerptae, vel spatia patentia in immensum, quorum littora nullis incisa angulis ambit sine aufractu oceanus" (p. 81, 182). On the relations of the extent of coast to the area of a continent (considered in some degree as a measure of the accessibility of the interior), see the inquiries in Berghaus, 'Annalen der Erdkunde', bd. xii., 1835, s. 490, and 'Physikal. Atlas', 1839, No. iii., s. 69.

The influence exercised by the articulation and higher development of the form of a continent on the moral and intellectual condition of nations was remarked by Strabo,* who extols p 292 the varied form of our small continent as a special advantage.

[footnote] *Strabo, lib. ii., p. 92, 198. Casaub.

Africa* and South America, which manifest so great a resemblence in their configuration, are also the two continents that exhibit the simplest littoral outlines.

[footnote] *Of Africa, Pliny says (v. 1), "Nec alia pars terrarum paudiores recipit sinus." The small Indian peninsula on this side the Ganges present, in its triangular outline, a third analogous form. In ancient Greece there prevailed an opinion of the regular configuration of the dry land. There were four gulfs or bays, among which the Persian Gulf was placed in opposition to the Hyrcanian or Caspian Sea (Arrian, vii., 16; Plut., 'in vita Alexandri', cap. 44; Dionys. Perieg., v. 48 and 630, p. 11, 38, Bernh.). These four bays and the isthmuses were, according to the optical fancies of Agesianax, supposed to be reflected in the moon (Plut., 'de Facie in Orbem Lunae', p. 921, 19). Respecting the 'terra quadrifida', or four divisions of the dry land, of which two lay north and two south of the equator, see Macrobius, 'Comm. in Somnium Scipionis', ii., 9. I have submitted this portion of the geography of the ancients, regarding which great confusion prevails, to a new and careful examination, in my 'Examen Crit. de l'Hist. de la Geogr.', t. i., p. 119, 145, 180-185, as also in 'Asie Centr.', t. ii., p. 172-178.

It is only the eastern shores of Asia, which, broken as it were by the force of the currents of the ocean* ('fractas ex aequore terra'), exhibit a richly-variegated configuration, peninsulas and contiguous islands alternating from the equator to 60 degrees north latitude.

[footnote] *Fleurieu, in 'Voyage de Marchand autour du Monde', t. iv., p. 38-42.

Our Atlantic Ocean presents all the indications of a valley. It is as if a flow of eddying waters had been directed first toward the northeast, then toward the northwest, and back again to the northeast. The parallelism of the coasts north of 10 degrees south latitude, the projecting and receding angles, the convexity of Brazil opposite to the Gulf of Guinea, that of Africa under the same parallel, with the Gulf of the Antilles, all favor this apparently speculative view.*

[footnote] *Humboldt, in the 'Journal de Physique', liii., 1799, p. 33; and 'Rel. Hist.', t. ii., p. 19; t. iii., p. 189, 198.

In this Atlantic valley, as is almost every where the case in the configuration of large continental masses, coasts deeply indented, and rich in islands, are situated opposite to those possessing a different character. I long since drew attention to the geognostic importance of entering into a comparison of the western coast of Africa and of South America within the tropics. The deeply curved indentation of the African continent at Fernando Po, 4 degrees 30' north latitude, is repeated on the coast of the Pacific at 18 degrees 15' south latitude, between the Valley of Arica and the Morro de Juan Diaz, where the Peruvian coast suddenly changes the direction from wouth to north which it had previously followed, and inclines to the northwest. This change p 293 of direction extends in like manner to the chain of the Andes, which is divided into two parallel branches affecting not only the littoral portions,* but even the eastern Cordilleras.

[footnote] *Humboldt, in Poggendorf's 'Annalen der Physik', bd. xl., s. 171. On the remarkable fiord formation at the southeast end of America, see Darwin's Journal ('Narrative of the Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle', vol. iii.), 1839, p. 266. The parallelism of the two mountain chains is maintained from 5 degrees north latitude. The change in the direction of the coast at Arica appears to be in consequence of the altered course of the fissure, above which the Cordillera of the Andes has been upheaved.

In the latter, civilization had its earliest seat in the South American plateaux where the small Alpine lake of Titicaca bathes the feet of the colossal mountains of Sorata and Illimani. Further to the south, from Valdiva and Chiloë (40 degrees to 42 degrees south latitude), through the Archipelago 'de los Chonos' to 'Terra del Fuego', we find repeated that singular configuration of 'fiords' (a blending of narrow and deeply-indented bays), which in the Northern hemisphere characterizes the western shores of Norway and Scotland.

These are the most general considerations suggested by the study of the upper surface of our planet with reference to the form of continents, and their expansion in a horizontal direction. We have collected facts and brought forward some analogies of configuration in distant parts of the earth, but we do not venture to regard them as fixed laws of form. When the traveler on the declivity of an active volcano, as, for instance, of Vesuvius, examines the frequent partial elevations by which portions of the soil are often permanently upheaved several feet above their former level, either immediately precediing or during the continuance of an eruption, thus forming roof-like or flattened summits, he is taught how accidental conditions in the expression of the force of subterranean vapors, and in the resistance to be overcome, may modify the feeble perturbations in the equilibrium of the internal elastic forces of our planet may have inclined them more to its norther than to its southern direction, and caused the continent in the eastern part of the globe to present a broad mass, whose major axis is almost parallel with the equator, while in the western and more oceanic part the southern extremity is extremely narrow.

Very little can be empirically determined regarding the causal connection of the phenomena of the formation of continents, or of the analogies and contrasts presented by their p 294 configuration. All that we know regarding this subject resolves itself into this one point, that the active cause is subterranean; that continents did not arise at once in the form they now present, but were, as we have already observed, increased by degrees by means of numerous oscillatory elevations and depressions of the soil, or were formed by the fusion of separate smaller continental masses. Their present form is, therefore, the result of two causes, which have exercised a consecutive action the one on the other; the first is the expression of subterranean force, whose direction we term accidental, owing to our inability to defint it, from its removal from within the sphere of our comprehension, while the second is derived from forces acting on the surface, among which volcanic eruptions, the elevation of mountains, and currents of sea water play the principal parts. How totally different would be the condition of the temperature of the earth, and consequently, of the state of vegetation, husbandry, and human society, if the major axis of the New Continent had the same direction as that of the Old Continent; if, for instance, the Cordilleras, instead of having a southern direction, inclined from east to west; if there had been no radiating tropical continent, like Africa, to the south of Europe; and if the Mediterranean, which was once connected with the Caspian and Red Seas, and which has become so powerful a means of furthering the intercommunication of nations, had never existed, or if it had been elevated like the plains of Lombardy and Cyrene?

The changes of the reciprocal relations of height between the fluid and solid portions of the earth's surface (changes which, at the same time, determine the outlines of continents, and the greater or lesser submersion of low lands) are to be ascribed to numerous unequally working causes. The most powerful have incontestably been the force of elastic vapors inclosed in the interior of the earth, the sudden change of temperature of certain dense strata,* the unequal secular loss of p 295 heat experienced by the crust and nucleus of the earth, occasioning ridges in the solid surface, local modifications of gravitation,** and, as a consequence of these alterations, in the curvature of a portion of the liquid element.

[footnote] *De la Beche, 'Sections and Views illustrative of Geological Phenomena', 1830, tab. 40; Charles Babbage, 'Observations on the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli, near Naples, and on certain Causes which may produce Geological Cycles of great Extent', 1834. "If a stratum of sandstone five miles in thickness should have its temperature raised about 100 degrees, its surface would rise twenty-five feet. Heated beds of clay would, on the contrary, occasion a sinking of the ground by their contraction." See Bischof, 'Wurmelehre des Innern unseres Erdkorpers', s. 303, concerning the calculations for the secular elevation of Sweden, on the supposition of a rise by so small a quantity as 7 degrees in a stratum of about 155,000 feet in thickness, and heated to a state of fusion.

[footnote] **The opinion so implicitly entertained regarding the invariability of the force of gravity at any given point of the earth's surface, has in some degree been controverted by the gradual rise of large portions of the earth's surface. See Bessel, 'Ueber Maas und Gewicht', in Schumacher's 'Jahrbuch fur' 1840, s. 134.

According to the views generally adopted by geognosists in the present day and which are supported by the observation of a series of well-attested facts, no less than by analogy with the most important volcanic phenomena, it would appear that the elevation of continents is actual, and not merely apparent or owing to the configuration of the upper surface of the sea. The merit of having advanced this view beloongs to Leopold von Buch, the narrative of his memorable 'Travels through Norway and Sweden' in 1806 and 1807.*

[footnnote] *Th. ii. (1810), s. 389. See Hallstrom, in 'Kongl. Vetenskaps-Academiens Handlingar' (Stockh.), 1823, p. 30; Lyell in the 'Philos. Trans.' for 1835; Blom (Amtmann in Budskerud), 'Stat. Beschr. von Norwegen',1843, s. 89-116. If not before Von Buch's travels through Scandinavia, at any rate before their publication, Playfair, in 1802, in his illustrations of the Huttonian theory, § 393, and according to Keilhau ('Om Landjardens Stigning in Norge', in the 'Nyt Magazine fur Naturvidenskaberne'), and the Dane Jessen, even before the time of Playfair, had expressed the opinion that it was not the sea which was sinking, but the solid land of Sweden which was rising. Their ideas, however, were wholly unknown to our great geologist, and exerted no influence on 'Norge fremstillet efter dets naturlige og borgerlige Tilstand', Kjobenh., 1763, sought to explain the causes of the changes in the relative levels of the land and sea, basing his views on the early calculations of Celsius, Kalm, and Dalin. He broaches some confused ideas regarding the possibility of an internal growth of rocks, but finally declares himself in favor of an upheaval of the land by earthquakes, "although," he observes, "no such rising was apparent immediately after the earthquake of Egersund, yet the earthquake may have opened the way for other causes producing such an effect."

While the whole coast of Sweden and Finland, from Solvitzborg, on the limits of Northern Scania, past Gefle to Tornea, and from Tornea to Abo, experiences a gradual rise of four feet in a century, the southern part of Sweden is, according to Neilson, undergoing a simultaneous depression.*

[footnote] *See Berzelius, 'Jahrsbericht uber die Fortschritte der Physichen Wiss.', No. 18, s. 686. The islands of Saltholm, opposite to Copenhagen, and Bjornholm, however, rise but very little -- Bjornholm scarcely one foot in a century. See Forchhammer, in 'Philos. Magazine', 3d Series, vol. ii., p. 309.

The maximum of this elevating p 296 force appears to be in the north of Lapland, and to diminish gradually to the south toward Calmar and Solvitzborg. Lines marking the ancient level of the sea in pre-historic times are indicated throughout the whole of Norway,* from Cape Lindesnaes to the extremity of the North Cape, by banks of shells identical with those of the present seas, and which have lately been most accurately examined by Bravais during his long winter sojourn at Bosekop.

[footnote] *Keilhan, in 'Nyt Mag. fur Naturvid.', 1832, bd. i., p. 105-254; bd. ii., p. 57; Bravais, 'Surles Lignes d'ancien Niveau de la Mer', 1843, p. 15-40. See, also, Darwin, "on the Parallel Roads of Glen-Roy and Lochaber," in 'Philos. Trans. for' 1839, p. 60.

These banks lie nearly 650 feet above the present mean level of the sea, and reappear, according to Keilhau and Eugene Robert, in a north-northwest direction on the coasts of Spitzbergen, opposite the North Cape. Leopold von Buch, who was the first to draw attention to the high banks of shells at Tromsoe (latitude 69 degrees 40'), has, however, shown that the more ancient elevations on the North Sea appertain to a different class of phenomena, from the regular and gradual retrogressive elevations of the Swedish shores in the Gulf of Bothnia. This latter phenomenon, which is well attested by historical evidence, must not be confounded with the changes in the level of the soil occasioned by earthquakes, as on the shores of Chili and of Cutch, and which have recently given occasion to similar observations in other countries. It has been found that a perceptible sinking resulting from a disturbance of the strata of the upper surface sometimes occurs, corresponding with an elevation elsewhere, as, for instance, in West Greenland, according to Pingel and Graah, in Dalmatia and in Scania.

Since it is highly probable that the oscillatory movements of the soil, and the rising and sinking of the upper surface, were more strongly marked in the early periods of our planet than at present, we shall be less surprised to find in the interior of continents some few portions of the earth's surface lying below the general level of existing seas. Instances of this kind occur in the soda lakes described by General Andreossy, the small bitter lakes in the narrow Isthmus of Suez, the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Tiberias, and especially the Dead Sea.*

[footnote] *Humboldt, 'Asie Centrale', t. ii., p. 319-324; t. iii., p. 549-551. The depression of the Dead Sea has been successively determined by the barometrical measurements of Count Berton, by the more careful ones of Russegger, and by the trigonometrical survey of Lieutenant Symond, of the Royal Navy, who states that the difference of level between the surface of the Dead Sea and the highest houses of Jaffa is about 1605 feet. Mr. Alderson, who communicated this result to the Geographical Society of London in a letter, of the contents of which I was informed by my friend, Captain Washington, was of opinion (Nov. 28, 1841) that the Dead Sea lay about 1400 feet under the level of the Mediterranean. A more recent communication of Lieutenant Symond (Jameson's 'Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal', vol. xxxiv., 1843, p. 178) gives 1312 feet as the final result of two very accordant trigonometrical operations.

The level of the water in the two last-named seas is p 297 666 and 1312 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. If we could suddenly remove the alluvial soil which covers the rocky strata in many parts of the earth's surface, we should discover how great a portion of the rocky crust of the earth was then below the present level of the sea. The periodic, although irregularly alternating rise and fall of the water of the Caspian Sea, of which I have myself observed evident traces in the northern portions of its basin, appears to prove,* as do also the observations of Darwin on the coral seas,** that without earthquakes, properly so- called, the surface of the earth is capable of the same gentle and progressive oscillations as those which must have prevailed so generally in the earliest ages, when the surface of the hardening crust of the earth was less compact than at present.

[footnote] *'Sur la Mobilite du fond de la Mer Caspienne', in my 'Asie Centr.', t. ii., p. 283-294. The Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburgh in 1830, at my request, charged the learned physicist Lenz to place marks indicating the mean level of the sea, for definite epochs, in different places near Baku, in the peninsula of Abscheron. In the same manner, in an appendix to the instructions given to Captain (now Sir James C.) Ross for his Antarctic expedition, I urged the necessity of causing marks to be cut in the rocks of the southern hemisphere, as had already been done in Sweden and on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Had this measure been adopted in the early voyages of Bougainville and Cook, we should now know whether the secular relative changes in the level of the seas and land are to be considered as a general, or merely a local natural phenomenon, and whether a law of direction can be recognized in the points which have simultaneous elevation or depression.

[footnote] **On the elevation and depression of the bottom of the South Sea, and the diffrent areas of alternate movements, see Darwin's 'Journal', p. 557, 561-566.

The phenomena to which we would here direct attention remind us of the instability of the present order of things, and of the changes to which the outlines and configuration of continents are probably still subject at long intervals of time. That which may scarcely be perceptible in one generation, accumulates during periods of time, whose duration is revealed to us by the movement of remote heavenly bodies. The eastern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula has probably risen p 298 about 320 feet in the space of 8000 years; and in 12,000 years, if the movement be regular, parts of the bottom of the sea which lie nearest the shores, and are in the present day covered by nearly fifty fathoms of water, will come to the surface and constitute dry land. But what are such intervals of time compared to the length of the geognostic periods revealed to us in the stratified series of formations, and in the world of extinct and varying organisms! We have hitherto only considered the phenomena of elevation; but the analogies of observed facts lead us with equal justice to assume the possibility of the depression of whole tracts of land. The mean elevation of the non-mountainous parts of France amounts to less than 480 feet. It would not, therefore, require any long period of time, compared with the old geognostic periods, in which such great changes were brought about in the interior of the earth, to effect the permanent submersion of the northwestern part of Europe, and induce essential alterations in its littoral relations.