*
[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.
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