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Updated: May 1, 2025
This supposition relieves us, at once, from the difficulty in which we were left, some time ago, by the arguments which I used to demonstrate the necessity of the existence of all the great types of the Eocene epoch in some antecedent period.
When the geologist looks to-day for the floor of the Eocene ocean, which he recognises by the shells of the Nummulites, he finds it 10,000 feet above the sea-level in the Alps, 16,000 feet above the sea-level in the Himalaya, and 20,000 feet above the sea-level in Thibet.
Before entering any further into particulars regarding the volcanic phenomena of this region, it may be desirable to give a short account of its geological structure, and the physical conditions amongst which the igneous eruptions were developed. Down to the close of the Eocene period the whole region now under consideration was occupied by the waters of the ocean.
Naturally enough, those most like the present animals are found in late Pliocene, and those which are close to the common ancestors of many of the later kinds are found in the Eocene, whilst we also find, at various levels of the Tertiary deposit, remains of side-branches of the mammalian pedigree, which, though including very powerful and remarkable beasts, have left no line of descent to represent them at the present day.
New forms of birds fly from tree to tree, or linger by the waters; and strange patriarchal types of mammals begin to move among the bones of the stricken reptiles. But the seas and the rains and rivers are acting with renewed vigour on the elevated lands, and the Eocene period closes in a fresh age of levelling. Let us put the work of a million years or so in a sentence.
So far as the Upper Eocene and the Miocene Mammalian Faunae are comparable, their relations are such as in no way to oppose the hypothesis that the older are the progenitors of the more recent forms, while, in some cases, they distinctly favour that hypothesis.
Fossils of giant penguins of Eocene and Miocene ages show that there has been extremely little development since. He passed on to the classification and habitat of different genera, nest-making habits, eggs, &c. Then to a brief account of the habits of the Emperors and Adelies, which was of course less novel ground for the old hands.
The like observations may be extended to nearly the whole of Europe, for, since the commencement of the Eocene Period, the entire European area, including some of the central and very lofty portions of the Alps themselves, as I have elsewhere shown, has, with the exception of a few districts, emerged from the deep to its present altitude.
The man who eats pâté de fois gras in the sweat of his girl cashier's face, or wears purple and fine linen in order that his typewriter may have an eocene gown and a pliocene hat, seems a tolerably satisfactory specimen of the genus thief; but let us not forget that in his own home a fairly good one he may enjoy and merit that highest and most honorable title in the hierarchy of woman's favor, "a good provider."
Its width in the middle and southern states is very commonly from 100 to 150 miles. It consists, in the South, as in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, almost exclusively of Eocene deposits; but in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, more modern strata predominate, of the age of the English Crag and faluns of Touraine. Fulgur canaliculatus. Fusus quadricostatus, Say.
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