We left America at the close of the Carboniferous epoch, when the central part of the United States was already raised above the water. Let us now give a glance at Europe in those early days, and see how far her physical history has advanced. What European countries loom up for us out of the Azoic sea, corresponding in time and character to the low range of hills which first defined the northern boundary of the United States? what did the Silurian and Devonian epochs add to these earliest tracts of dry land in the Old World? and where do we find the coal basins which show us the sites of her Carboniferous forests? Since the relation between the epochs of comparative tranquillity and the successive upheavals has been so carefully traced in Europe, I will endeavor, while giving a sketch of that early European world, to point out, at the same time, the connection of the different systems of upheaval with the successive stratified deposits, without, however, entering into such details as must necessarily become technical and tedious. In the European ocean of the Azoic epoch we find five islands of considerable size. The largest of these is at the North. Scandinavia had even then almost her present outlines; for Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, all of which are chiefly granitic in character, were among the first lands to be raised. Between Sweden and Norway, there is, however, still a large tract of land under water, forming an extensive lake or a large inland sea in the heart of the country. If the reader will take the trouble to look on any geological map of Europe, he will see an extensive patch of Silurian rock in the centre of Sweden and Norway. This represents that sheet of water gradually to be filled by the accumulation of Silurian deposits and afterwards raised by a later disturbance. There is another mass of land far to the southeast of this Scandinavian island, which we may designate as the Bohemian island, for it lies in the region now called Bohemia, though it includes, also, a part of Saxony and Moravia. The northwest corner of France, that promontory which we now call Bretagne, with a part of Normandy adjoining it, formed another island; while to the southeast of it lay the central plateau of France. Great Britain was not forgotten in this early world; for a part of the Scotch hills, some of the Welsh mountains, and a small elevation here and there in Ireland, already formed a little archipelago in that region. By a most careful analysis of the structure of the rocks in these ancient patches of land, tracing all the dislocations of strata, all the indications of any disturbance of the earth-crust whatsoever, Elie de Beaumont has detected and classified four systems of upheavals, previous to the Silurian epoch, to which he refers these islands in the Azoic sea. He has named them the systems of La Vendee, of Finistere, of Longmynd, and of Morbihan. These names have, for