Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

432 CONCLUSIONS.

mica-schist, and other related rocks, and limestone into architectural and statuary marble. Bituminous coal was turned into anthracite in Pennsylvania.” #

I copy from the same work (p. 153) the following eut, showing the extent to which the rocks were crushed out of shape :

SEcTION ON THE Scuvyneint, Peynsytyanza. P, Pottsville on the coal-measures: 2, Calciferous formation; 3, Trenton ; 4, Hudson River; 5, Oneida and Niagara; 7, Lower Helderberg; 8,

10, 11, Devonian; 12, 13, Subcarboniferous ; 14, Carboniferous, or coalmeasures. These tremendous changes were caused by a pressure of some kind which came from the east, from where the Atlantic Ocean now rolls,

“Tt was due to a lateral pressure, the folding haying taken place just as it might in paper or cloth under a lateral or pushing movement.”

“Tt was accompanied by great heat, which melted and consolidated the rocks, changed their condition, drove the volatile gases out of the bituminous coal and changed it into anthracite, in some places altered it to graphite, as if it had been passed through a furnace.” }

Tt also made an almost universal slaughter of all forms of life:

“The extermination of life which took place at this time was one of the most extensive in all geological history; . . . no fossils of the Carboniferous formation occur in later rocks.” #

* Dana’s “ Text-Book,” p, 152. + Ibid., p. 155. t Ibid, p. 155, # Ibid., p. 157.