Our knowledge of these rocks is not at all
complete, and we must remember that some of this primitive land
may be now under the sea or buried in unsuspected regions. It is
significant, however, that, up to the present, exploration seems
to show that in those remote ages only about one-fifth of our
actual land-surface stood above the level of the waters. Apart
from a patch of some 20,000 square miles of what is now
Australia, and smaller patches in Tasmania, New Zealand, and
India, nearly the whole of this land was in the far North. A
considerable area of eastern Canada had emerged, with lesser
islands standing out to the west and south of North America.
Another large area lay round the basin of the Baltic; and as
Greenland, the Hebrides, and the extreme tip of Scotland, belong
to the same age, it is believed that a continent, of which they
are fragments, united America and Europe across the North
Atlantic. Of the rest of what is now Europe there were merely
large islands--one on the border of England and Wales, others in
France, Spain, and Southern Germany. Asia was represented by a
large area in China and Siberia, and an island or islands on the
site of India.
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