REMAINS OF ANTEDILUVIAN FORESTS.

455

nodon, to which the groves of palms and arborescent ferns would be mere beds of reeds, must have been of such prodigious magnitude, that the existing animal creation, presents us with no fit objects of comparison. Imagine an animal of the lizard tribe, 3 or 4 times as large as the largest crocodile, having jaws equal in size to the incisors of the rhinoceros, and crested with horns; such a creature must have been the iguanodon."

Professor Kounizin describes in the Isis for 1821, immense beds of fossil wood in several localities of the governments of Novogorod and Twer in the north of Russia, where no such trees are now found to grow. In moist clayey soil, they are sometimes petrified. The oaks not petrified are very tender when first dug up, and may be cleft easily into thin spars, like pinewood; but when dried, they become blacker, and so hard, that the hatchet is notched in cutting them. There are no oaks to be found growing even in any of the contiguous countries, which have been bare and barren from time immemorial. Similar beds of fossil wood occur over the whole of North Russia, on the banks of the Doubna, Kachinka, and Karojincha, as also in the governments of Wologda and Aloncy.

Near Canstand on the river Necker, M. Autenrieth found an entire forest of the trunks of palmtrees buried along with the remains of elephants, of which more than 60 tusks were found, none of them deeper than 20 feet beneath the surface, in an indurated mass of clay, sand, pebbles, and ochre, which had to be blasted by gunpowder to get at the fossils.-Cuvier, Ossemens Fossiles, I. 122.

The fossil shells found in the strata of England, France, and the contiguous countries, having for the most part no antitypes alive, except in equatorial regions, harmonise with the preceding details.

It has been said that in the calcareous strata at Grignon near Paris, more genera and species occur than could be found on the whole coasts of France. It is only between the tropics where the ocean contains such a number of mollusca, that sea-grounds can be found as rich in testaceous productions as the bed of Grignon. If we take into account also, that the fossil shells belong mostly to hot climates, we shall conclude that in the latitude of France in that former state of things the climate must have been of a tropical temperature. The nautili spiruli, and many other shells found fossilised in our strata, exist alive only near the equator; a fact which confirms the preceding proposition. The following table exhibits a comparative view of the number of genera and species of animals, heretofore discovered both in the fossil and living state, with the strata in which the fossilised are found.

The polypary family, the first in the list, includes the madrepores, and other worm-like creatures, which construct what are commonly called the coral reefs. In the department of Calvados in France, mineral beds occur of very great extent, composed almost entirely of the debris of polyparies. In other regions still farther to the north, remains of large fossil polyparies exist, whose genera now live only in tropical seas.

Stellerides (Starfish),

23 30 52 47 19 36 105 527 414

Echinides (Sea urchins), 2 6 3 7 8 5 11 95 112

Annelides,

281 88

291

18 61 24 44 25 51 103 10091104

33 87 28 27 16 93 148 1945 1544 The remains of birds

Fishes,

cetaceous,

36 36
3 3

23

This curious table, and its introductory statements, are taken from the article Petrifactions, written by M. Defrance for the Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles, and published in 1826.

CHAP. IV.-ELEVATION OF SUBMARINE STRATA.

HAVING endeavoured to solve one enigma of the primeval world, the fervid temperature of even its circumpolar zones, I shall next offer some remarks illustrative of another geological difficulty, the transfer of the ocean from its ancient to its pre-' sent bed.

457

Existing phenomena justify us in referring this mighty change to a twofold operation; the elevation of certain submarine strata over an extensive region, and the concomitant disruption and submersion of dry land. The basaltic or trap phenomena, lead to the conclusion that such upheavings and subversions were not confined to one epoch of the antediluvian world, but that coeval with its birth, they pervaded the whole period of its duration. Hence sea-born lands came forth to the day, and primeval plains were engulphed in succession; circumstances fully demonstrated by the dens of antediluvian animals which abound in shell-limestone rocks, and by many other appearances. Such extensive elevations of land, often to vast heights, necessarily involved a corresponding displacement in the bed of the waters; which being of invariable volume must have shifted their position with every change in the form of their basin. The deluge, that universal transflux of the ocean, was the last and greatest of these terraqueous convulsions, and finally gave our spheroid, the more stable equilibrium which it has ever since possessed.*

The nature and causes of that unstable equilibrium, whose traces are still visible in the antediluvian frame-work of the globe, we have endeavoured to explain, and shall add some further remarks in the chapter entitled "Phenomena of the Deluge." Meanwhile I shall prove by decisive evidence, that even under our more settled terra

"Neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.” Genesis ix. 11.

MRS. GRAHAM ON EARTHQUAKES IN CHILI. 459

queous equilibrium, extensive tracts of land have been upheaved or elevated from the waters in postdiluvian times.

In advancing these proofs, I shall commence with the testimony of an intelligent eye-witness to a recent phenomenon of the kind, on no dubious or inconsiderable scale. I allude to the " Account of some Effects of the late Earthquakes in Chili, by Mrs. Maria Graham," published in the first volume of the second series of the Geological Transactions.

The first shock by which the towns of Valparaiso, Melipilla, Quillota, and Casa Blanco were almost destroyed, and Santiago much damaged, was felt at past 10 o'clock in the evening of Tuesday 19th Nov. 1822. It lasted 3 minutes. In a few minutes after the first shock there was another less severe; and from that time, the whole night long, successive shocks were felt, twice in every five minutes, each lasting from a half to a whole minute. On the 20th, 21st, and 22d, the shocks continued. A little before 10 of the latter day, three successive loud explosions were heard, like the sound of heavy artillery, and under which the earth trembled violently. The weather was hot and sunny on one day, and foggy with cold drizzling rain on another. On the 23d and 24th, the earthquakes continued with a mild cloudy sky. From this time till the 18th January, 1823, when Mrs. Graham left that country, continual earthquakes more or less severe, were felt every day; and she has learned that they were very violent in the subsequent July, and had not ceased altogether so late as September.

The sensation experienced during the more violent shocks was that of the earth being suddenly heaved up in a direction from north to south, and then falling down again; a transverse motion also being now and then felt. The tremour between the shocks was shown to be real by the agitation of water in a glass; and during the shocks themselves, water or mercury placed in a glass, was thrown over the edge in every direction. In the house where Mrs. G. resided, the furniture was all displaced with some degree of regularity, so as to range not parallel to the walls which fronted to the north and south, but at a given angle diagonally. The sensation