Silurian Rocks are found in France in the departments of La Manche,
Calvados, and of the Sarthe, and in Languedoc the Silurian formation has
occupied the attention of Messrs. Graff and Fournet, who have traced
along the base of the Espinouse, the green, primordial chlorite-schists,
surmounted by clay-slates, which become more and more pure as the
distance from the masses of granite and gneiss increases, and the valley
of the Jour is approached. Upon these last the Silurian system rests,
sinking towards the plain under Secondary and Tertiary formations. In
Great Britain, Silurian strata are found enormously developed in the
West and South Highlands of Scotland, on the western slopes of the
Pennine chain and the mountains of Wales, and in the adjoining counties
of Shropshire--their most typical region--and Worcestershire. In Spain;
in Germany (on the banks of the Rhine); in Bohemia--where, also, they
are largely developed, especially in the neighbourhood of Prague--in
Sweden, where they compose the entire island of Gothland; in Norway; in
Russia, especially in the Ural Mountains; and in America, in the
neighbourhood of New York, and half way across the continent--in all
these countries they are more or less developed.
We may add, as a general characteristic of the Silurian system as a
whole, that of all formations it is the most disturbed. In the countries
where it prevails, it only appears as fragments which have escaped
destruction amid the numerous changes that have affected it during the
earlier ages of the world. The beds, originally horizontal, are turned
up, contorted, folded over, and sometimes become even vertical, as in
the slates of Angers, Llanberis, and Ireleth. D’Orbigny found the
Silurian beds with their fossils in the American Andes, at the height of
16,000 feet above the level of the sea. What vast upheavals must have
been necessary to elevate these fossils to such a height!
In the Silurian period the sea still occupied the earth almost entirely;
it covered the greater part of Europe: all the area comprised between
Spain and the Ural was under water. In France only two islands had
emerged from the primordial ocean. One of them was formed of the
granitic rocks of what are now Brittany and La Vendée; the other
constituted the great central plateau, and consisted of the same rocks.
The northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and of Russian Lapland formed a
vast continental surface. In America the emerged lands were more
extensive. In North America an island extended over eighteen degrees of
latitude, in the part now called New Britain. In South America, in the
Pacific, Chili formed one elongated island. Upon the Atlantic, a portion
of Brazil, to the extent of twenty degrees of latitude, was raised above
water. Finally, in the equatorial regions, Guiana formed a later island
in the vast ocean which still covered most other parts of the New World.
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