Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/621

Rh Europe and Asia. It was at the close of this period of extreme depression that those subterranean movements began to which the present configuration of Europe is mainly due. The Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines, Carpathians, the Caucasus, and the heights of Asia Minor mark as it were the crests of the vast earth-waves into which the solid framework of Europe was then thrown. So enormous was the contortion that, as may be seen along the northern Alps, the rocks for thousands of feet were completely inverted, this inversion being accompanied by the most colossal folding and twisting. The massive sedimentary formations were crumpled up, and doubled over each other, as we might fold a pile of cloth. In the midst of these commotions the west of Europe remained undisturbed. It is strange to reflect that the soft clays and sands under London are as old as some of the hardened rocks which have been upheaved into such picturesque peaks along the northern flanks of the Alps.

After the completion of these vast terrestrial disturbances, the outlines of Europe began distinctly to shape themselves into their present form. The Alps rose as a great mountain-range, flanked on the north by a vast lake which covered all the present lowlands of Switzerland, and stretched northward across a part of the Jura Mountains, and eastward into Germany. The size of this fresh-water basin may be inferred from the fact that one portion only of the sand and gravel that accumulated in it even now measures six thousand feet in thickness. The surrounding land was densely clothed with a vegetation indicative of a much warmer climate than Europe now can boast. Palms of American types, as well as date-palms, huge Californian pines (Sequoia), laurels, cypresses, and evergreen oaks, with many other evergreen trees, gave a distinctive character to the vegetation. Among the trees too were planes, poplars, maples, willows, oaks, and other ancestors of our living woods and forests; numerous ferns grew in the underwood, while clematis and vine wound themselves among the branches. The waters were haunted by huge pachyderms, such as the dinotherium and hippopotamus; while the rhinoceros and mastodon roamed through the woodlands.

A marked feature of this period in Europe was the abundance and activity of the volcanoes. In Hungary, Rhineland, and Central France, numerous vents opened and poured out their streams of lava and showers of ashes. From the south of Antrim, also, another great line of active orifices ran up the west coast of Scotland and by the Faroe Islands to Iceland, whence it extended even far into Arctic Greenland.

The mild climate indicated by the vegetation in the deposits of the Swiss lake, prevailed even into polar latitudes, for the remains of numerous evergreen shrubs, oaks, maples, walnuts, hazels, and many other trees, have been found under the sheets of lava in the far north of Greenland. The sea still occupied much of the lowlands of Europe.