Island Life Part 5

But if the last glacial epoch has coincided with, and has been to a considerable extent caused by, a high excentricity of the earth's...o...b..t, we are naturally led to expect that earlier glacial epochs would have occurred whenever the excentricity was unusually large. Dr. Croll has published tables showing the varying amounts of excentricity for three million years back; and from these it appears that there have been many periods of high excentricity, which has often been far greater than at the time of the last glacial epoch.[10] The accompanying diagram has been drawn from these tables, and it will be seen that the highest excentricity occurred 850,000 years ago, at which time the difference between the sun's distance at _aphelion_ and _perihelion_ was thirteen and a half millions of miles, whereas during the last glacial period the maximum difference was ten and a half million miles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM SHOWING THE CHANGES OF EXCENTRICITY DURING THE LAST THREE MILLION YEARS.]

Now, judging by the amount of organic and physical change that occurred during and since the glacial epoch, and that which has occurred since the Miocene period, it is considered probable that this maximum of excentricity coincided with some part of the latter period; and Dr. Croll maintains that a glacial epoch must then have {60} occurred surpa.s.sing in severity that of which we have such convincing proofs, and consisting like it of alternations of cold and warm phases every 10,500 years. The diagram also shows us another long-continued period of high excentricity from 1,750,000 to 1,950,000 years ago, and yet another almost equal to the maximum 2,500,000 years back. These may perhaps have occurred during the Eocene and Cretaceous epochs respectively, or all may have been included within the limits of the Tertiary period. As two of these high excentricities greatly exceed that which caused our glacial epoch, while the third is almost equal to it and of longer duration, they seem to afford us the means of testing rival theories of the causes of glaciation. If, as Dr. Croll argues, high excentricity is the great and dominating agency in bringing on glacial epochs, geographical changes being subordinate, then there must have been glacial epochs of great severity at all these three periods; while if he is also correct in supposing that the alternate phases of precession would inevitably produce glaciation in one hemisphere, and a proportionately mild and equable climate in the opposite hemisphere, then we should have to look for evidence of exceptionally warm and exceptionally cold periods, occurring {61} alternately and with several repet.i.tions, within a s.p.a.ce of time which, geologically speaking, is very short indeed.

Let us then inquire first into the character of the evidence we should expect to find of such changes of climate, if they have occurred; we shall then be in a better position to estimate at its proper value the evidence that actually exists, and, after giving it due weight, to arrive at some conclusion as to the theory that best explains and harmonises it.

_Effects of Denudation in Destroying the Evidence of Remote Glacial Epochs._--It may be supposed, that if earlier glacial epochs than the last did really occur, we ought to meet with some evidence of the fact corresponding to that which has satisfied us of the extensive recent glaciation of the northern hemisphere; but Dr. Croll and other writers have ably argued that no such evidence is likely to be found. It is now generally admitted that sub-aerial denudation is a much more powerful agent in lowering and modifying the surface of a country than was formerly supposed. It has in fact been proved to be so powerful that the difficulty now felt is, not to account for the denudation which can be proved to have occurred, but to explain the apparent persistence of superficial features which ought long ago to have been destroyed.

A proof of the lowering and eating away of the land-surface which every one can understand, is to be found in the quant.i.ty of solid matter carried down to the sea and to low grounds by rivers. This is capable of pretty accurate measurement, and it has been carefully measured for several rivers, large and small, in different parts of the world. The details of these measurements will be given in a future chapter, and it is only necessary here to state that the average of them all gives us this result--that one foot must, on an average, be taken off the entire surface of the land each 3,000 years in order to produce the amount of sediment and matter in solution which is actually carried into the sea. To give an idea of the limits of variation in different rivers it may be mentioned that the Mississippi is one which denudes its valley at a slow rate, taking 6,000 {62} years to remove one foot; while the Po is the most rapid, taking only 729 years to do the same work in its valley. The cause of this difference is very easy to understand. A large part of the area of the Mississippi basin consists of the almost rainless prairie and desert regions of the west, while its sources are in comparatively arid mountains with scanty snow-fields, or in a low forest-clad plateau. The Po, on the other hand, is wholly in a district of abundant rainfall, while its sources are spread over a great amphitheatre of snowy Alps nearly 400 miles in extent, where the denuding forces are at a maximum. As Scotland is a mountain region of rather abundant rainfall, the denuding power of its rains and rivers is probably rather above than under the average, but to avoid any possible exaggeration we will take it at a foot in 4,000 years.

Now if the end of the glacial epoch be taken to coincide with the termination of the last period of high excentricity, which occurred about 80,000 years ago (and no geologist will consider this too long for the changes which have since taken place), it follows that the entire surface of Scotland must have been since lowered an average amount of twenty feet.

But over large areas of alluvial plains, and wherever the rivers have spread during floods, the ground will have been raised instead of lowered; and on all nearly level ground and gentle slopes there will have been comparatively little denudation; so that proportionally much more must have been taken away from mountain sides and from the bottoms of valleys having a considerable downward slope. One of the very highest authorities on the subject of denudation, Mr. Archibald Geikie, estimates the area of these more rapidly denuded portions as only one-tenth of the comparatively level grounds, and he further estimates that the former will be denuded about ten times as fast as the latter. It follows that the valleys will be deepened and widened on the average about five feet in the 4,000 years instead of one foot; and thus many valleys must have been deepened and widened 100 feet, and some even more, since the glacial epoch, while the more level portions of the country will have been lowered on the average only about two feet. {63}

Now Dr. Croll gives us the following account of the present aspect of the surface of a large part of the country:--

"Go where one will in the lowlands of Scotland and he shall hardly find a single acre whose upper surface bears the marks of being formed by the denuding agents now in operation. He will observe everywhere mounds and hollows which cannot be accounted for by the present agencies at work....

In regard to the general surface of the country the present agencies may be said to be just beginning to carve a new line of features out of the old glacially-formed surface. But so little progress has yet been made, that the kames, gravel-mounds, knolls of boulder clay, &c., still retain in most cases their original form."[11]

The facts here seem a little inconsistent, and we must suppose that Dr.

Croll has somewhat exaggerated the universality and complete preservation of the glaciated surface. The amount of average denudation, however, is not a matter of opinion but of measurement; and its consequences can in no way be evaded. They are, moreover, strictly proportionate to the time elapsed; and if so much of the old surface of the country has certainly been remodelled or carried into the sea since the last glacial epoch, it becomes evident that any surface-phenomena produced by still earlier glacial epochs _must_ have long since entirely disappeared.

_Rise of the Sea-level Connected with Glacial Epochs, a Cause of Further Denudation._--There is also another powerful agent that must have a.s.sisted in the destruction of any such surface deposits or markings. During the last glacial epoch itself there were several minor oscillations of the land, without counting the great submergence of over 1,300 feet, supposed to be indicated by patches of sh.e.l.ly clays and gravels in Wales and Ireland, and also in a few localities in England and Scotland, since these are otherwise explained by many geologists. Other subsidences have no doubt occurred in the same areas during the Tertiary epoch, and some writers connect these subsidences with the glacial {64} period itself, the unequal amount of ice at the two poles causing the centre of gravity of the earth to be displaced when, of course, the surface of the ocean will conform to it and appear to rise in the one hemisphere and sink in the other. If this is the case, subsidences of the land are natural concomitants of a glacial period, and will powerfully aid in removing all evidence of its occurrence.

We have seen reason to believe, however, that during the height of the glacial epoch the extreme cold persisted through the successive phases of precession, and if so, both polar areas would probably be glaciated at once. This would cause the abstraction of a large quant.i.ty of water from the ocean, and a proportionate elevation of the land, which would react on the acc.u.mulation of snow and ice, and thus add another to that wonderful series of physical agents which act and react on each other so as to intensify glacial epochs.

But whether or not these causes would produce any important fluctuations of the sea-level is of comparatively little importance to our present inquiry, because the wide extent of marine Tertiary deposits in the northern hemisphere and their occurrence at considerable elevations above the present sea-level, afford the most conclusive proofs that great changes of sea and land have occurred throughout the entire Tertiary period; and these repeated submergences and emergences of the land combined with sub-aerial and marine denudation, would undoubtedly destroy all those superficial evidences of ice-action on which we mainly depend for proofs of the occurrence of the last glacial epoch.

_What Evidence of Early Glacial Epochs may be Expected._--Although we may admit the force of the preceding argument as to the extreme improbability of our finding any clear evidence of the superficial action of ice during remote glacial epochs, there is nevertheless one kind of evidence that we ought to find, because it is both wide-spread and practically indestructible.

One of the most constant of all the phenomena of a glaciated country is the abundance of icebergs produced by the breaking off of the ends of glaciers which terminate {65} in arms of the sea, or of the terminal face of the ice-sheet which pa.s.ses beyond the land into the ocean. In both these cases abundance of rocks and _debris_, such as form the terminal moraines of glaciers on land, are carried out to sea and deposited over the sea-bottom of the area occupied by icebergs. In the case of an ice-sheet it is almost certain that much of the ground-moraine, consisting of mud and imbedded stones, similar to that which forms the "till" when deposited on land, will be carried out to sea with the ice and form a deposit of marine "till" near the sh.o.r.e.

It has indeed been objected that when an ice-sheet covered an entire country there would be no moraines, and that rocks or _debris_ are very rarely seen on icebergs. But during every glacial epoch there will be a southern limit to the glaciated area, and everywhere near this limit the mountain-tops will rise far above the ice and deposit on it great ma.s.ses of _debris_; and as the ice-sheet spreads, and again as it pa.s.ses away, this moraine-forming area will successively occupy the whole country. But even such an ice-clad country as Greenland is now known to have protruding peaks and rocky ma.s.ses which give rise to moraines on its surface;[12] and, as rocks from c.u.mberland and Ireland were carried by the ice-sheet to the Isle of Man, there must have been a very long period during which the ice-sheets of Britain and Ireland terminated in the ocean and sent off abundance of rock-laden bergs into the surrounding seas; and the same thing must have occurred along all the coasts of Northern Europe and Eastern America.

We cannot therefore doubt that throughout the greater part of the duration of a glacial epoch the seas adjacent to the glaciated countries would receive continual deposits of large rocks, rock-fragments, and gravel, similar to the material of modern and ancient moraines, and a.n.a.logous to the drift and the numerous travelled blocks which the ice has undoubtedly scattered broadcast over every glaciated country; and these rocks and boulders would be imbedded in whatever deposits were then forming, either from the matter carried down by rivers or from the mud ground off {66} the rocks and carried out to sea by the glaciers themselves. Moreover, as icebergs float far beyond the limits of the countries which gave them birth, these ice-borne materials would be largely imbedded in deposits forming from the denudation of countries which had never been glaciated, or from which the ice had already disappeared.

But if every period of high excentricity produced a glacial epoch of greater or less extent and severity, then, on account of the frequent occurrence of a high phase of excentricity during the three million years for which we have the tables, these boulder and rock-strewn deposits would be both numerous and extensive. Four hundred thousand years ago the excentricity was almost exactly the same as it is now, and it continually increased from that time up to the glacial epoch. Now if we take double the present excentricity as being sufficient to produce some glaciation in the temperate zone, we find (by drawing out the diagram at p. 171 on a larger scale) that during 1,150,000 years out of the 2,400,000 years immediately preceding the last glacial epoch, the excentricity reached or exceeded this amount, consisting of sixteen separate epochs, divided from each other by periods varying from 30,000 to 200,000 years. But if the last glacial epoch was at its maximum 200,000 years ago, a s.p.a.ce of three million years will certainly include much, if not all, of the Tertiary period; and even if it does not, we have no reason to suppose that the character of the excentricity would suddenly change beyond the three million years.

It follows, therefore, that if periods of high excentricity, like that which appears to have been synchronous with our last glacial epoch and is generally admitted to have been one of its efficient causes, always produced glacial epochs (with or without alternating warm periods), then the whole of the Tertiary deposits in the north temperate and Arctic zones should exhibit frequent alternations of boulder and rock-bearing beds, or coa.r.s.e rock-strewn gravels a.n.a.logous to our existing glacial drift, and with some corresponding change of organic remains. Let us then see what evidence can be adduced of the existence of such deposits, and whether it is adequate to support the {67} theory of repeated glacial epochs during the Tertiary period.

_Evidences of Ice-action during the Tertiary Period._--The Tertiary fossils both of Europe and North America indicate throughout warm or temperate climates, except those of the more recent Pliocene deposits which merge into the earlier glacial beds. The Miocene deposits of Central and Southern Europe, for example, contain marine sh.e.l.ls of some genera now only found farther south, while the fossil plants often resemble those of Madeira and the southern states of North America. Large reptiles, too, abounded, and man-like apes lived in the south of France and in Germany. Yet in Northern Italy, near Turin, there are beds of sandstone and conglomerate full of characteristic Miocene sh.e.l.ls, but containing in an intercalated deposit angular blocks of serpentine and greenstone often of enormous size, one being fourteen feet long, and another twenty-six feet. Some of the blocks were observed by Sir Charles Lyell to be faintly striated and partly polished on one side, and they are scattered through the beds for a thickness of nearly 150 feet. It is interesting that the particular bed in which the blocks occur yields no organic remains, though these are plentiful both in the underlying and overlying beds, as if the cold of the icebergs, combined with the turbidity produced by the glacial mud, had driven away the organisms adapted to live only in a comparatively warm sea.

Rock similar in kind to these erratics occurs about twenty miles distant in the Alps.

The Eocene period is even more characteristically tropical in its flora and fauna, since palms and Cycadaceae, turtles, snakes, and crocodiles then inhabited England. Yet on the north side of the Alps, extending from Switzerland to Vienna, and also south of the Alps near Genoa, there is a deposit of finely-stratified sandstone several thousand feet in thickness, quite dest.i.tute of organic remains, but containing in several places in Switzerland enormous blocks either angular or partly rounded, and composed of oolitic limestone or of granite. Near the Lake of Thun some of the granite blocks found in this deposit are of enormous size, one of them being 105 feet long, ninety feet wide, {68} and forty-five feet thick! The granite is red, and of a peculiar kind which cannot be matched anywhere in the Alps, or indeed elsewhere. Similar erratics have also been found in beds of the same age in the Carpathians and in the Apennines, indicating probably an extensive inland European sea into which glaciers descended from the surrounding mountains, depositing these erratics, and cooling the water so as to destroy the mollusca and other organisms which had previously inhabited it. It is to be observed that wherever these erratics occur they are always in the vicinity of great mountain ranges; and although these can be proved to have been in great part elevated during the Tertiary period, we must also remember that they must have been since very much lowered by denudation, of the amount of which, the enormously thick Eocene and Miocene beds now forming portions of them is in some degree a measure as well as a proof. It is not therefore at all improbable that during some part of the Tertiary period these mountains may have been far higher than they are now, and this we know might be sufficient for the production of glaciers descending to the sea-level, even were the climate of the lowlands somewhat warmer than at present.[13]

_The Weight of the Negative Evidence._--But when we proceed to examine the Tertiary deposits of other parts of {69} Europe, and especially of our own country, for evidence of this kind, not only is such evidence completely wanting, but the facts are of so definite a character as to satisfy most geologists that it can never have existed; and the same maybe said of temperate North America and of the Arctic regions generally.

In his carefully written paper on "The Climate Controversy" the late Mr.

Searles V. Wood, Jun., remarks on this point as follows: "Now the Eocene formation is complete in England, and is exposed in continuous section along the north coast of the Isle of Wight from its base to its junction with the Oligocene (or Lower Miocene according to some), and along the northern coast of Kent from its base to the Lower Bagshot Sand. It has been intersected by railway and other cuttings in all directions and at all horizons, and pierced by wells innumerable; while from its strata in England, France, and Belgium, the most extensive collections of organic remains have been made of any formation yet explored, and from nearly all its horizons, for at one place or another in these three countries nearly every horizon may be said to have yielded fossils of some kind. These fossils, however, whether they be the remains of a flora such as that of Sheppey, or of a vertebrate fauna containing the crocodile and alligator, such as is yielded by beds indicative of terrestrial conditions, or of a molluscan a.s.semblage such as is present in marine or fluvio-marine beds of the formation, are of unmistakably tropical or sub-tropical character throughout; and no trace whatever has appeared of the intercalation of a glacial period, much less of successive intercalations indicative of more than one period of 10,500 years' glaciation. Nor can it be urged that the glacial epochs of the Eocene in England were intervals of dry land, and so have left no evidence of their existence behind them, because a large part of the continuous sequence of Eocene deposits in this country consists of alternations of fluviatile, fluvio-marine, and purely marine strata; so that it seems impossible that during the acc.u.mulation of the Eocene formation in England a glacial period could have occurred without its evidences being {70} abundantly apparent. The Oligocene of Northern Germany and Belgium, and the Miocene of those countries and of France, have also afforded a rich molluscan fauna, which, like that of the Eocene, has as yet presented no indication of the intrusion of anything to interfere with its uniformly sub-tropical character."[14]

This is sufficiently striking; but when we consider that this enormous series of deposits, many thousand feet in thickness, consists wholly of alternations of clays, sands, marls, shales, or limestones, with a few beds of pebbles or conglomerate, not one of the whole series containing irregular blocks of foreign material, boulders or gravel, such as we have seen to be the essential characteristic of a glacial epoch; and when we find that this same general character pervades all the extensive Tertiary deposits of temperate North America, we shall, I think, be forced to the conclusion that no general glacial epochs could have occurred during their formation. It must be remembered that the "imperfection of the geological record" will not help us here, because the series of Tertiary deposits is unusually complete, and we must suppose some destructive agency to have selected all the intercalated glacial beds and to have so completely made away with them that not a fragment remains, while preserving all or almost all the _interglacial_ beds; and to have acted thus capriciously, not in one limited area only, but over the whole northern hemisphere, with the local exceptions on the flanks of great mountain ranges already referred to.

_Temperate Climates in the Arctic Regions._--As we have just seen, the geological evidence of the persistence of sub-tropical or warm climates in the north temperate zone during the greater part of the Tertiary period is almost irresistible, and we have now to consider the still more extraordinary series of observations which demonstrate that this amelioration of climate extended into the Arctic zone, and into countries now almost wholly buried in snow and ice. These warm Arctic climates have been explained by Dr. Croll as due to periods of high excentricity with winter in _perihelion_, a theory which implies alternating {71} epochs of glaciation far exceeding what now prevails; and it is therefore necessary to examine the evidence pretty closely in order to see if this view is more tenable in the case of the north polar regions than we have found it to be in that of the north temperate zone.

The most recent of these milder climates is perhaps indicated by the abundant remains of large mammalia--such as the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison and horse, in the icy alluvial plains of Northern Siberia, and especially in the Liakhov Islands in the same lat.i.tude as the North Cape of Asia. These remains occur not in one or two spots only, as if collected by eddies at the mouth of a river, but along the whole borders of the Arctic Ocean; and it is generally admitted that the animals must have lived upon the adjacent plains, and that a considerably milder climate than now prevails could alone have enabled them to do so. How long ago this occurred we do not know, but one of the last intercalated mild periods of the glacial epoch itself seems to offer all the necessary conditions. Again, Sir Edward Belcher discovered on the dreary sh.o.r.es of Wellington Channel in 75 N. Lat. the trunk and root of a fir tree which had evidently grown where it was found. It appeared to belong to the species _Abies alba_, or white fir, which now reaches 68 N. Lat. and is the most northerly conifer known. Similar trees, one four feet in circ.u.mference and thirty feet long, were found by Lieut. Mecham in Prince Patrick's Island in Lat. 76 12' N., and other Arctic explorers have found remains of trees in high lat.i.tudes.[15]

Similar indications of a recent milder climate are found in Spitzbergen.

Professor Nordenskjold says: "At various places on Spitzbergen, at the bottom of Lomme Bay, at Cape Thordsen, in Blomstrand's strata in Advent Bay, there are found large and well-developed sh.e.l.ls of a bivalve, _Mytilus edulis_, which is not now found living on the coast of Spitzbergen, though on the west coast of Scandinavia it everywhere covers the rocks near the sea-sh.o.r.e. These sh.e.l.ls occur most plentifully in the bed of a river which runs through Reindeer Valley at Cape Thordsen. They {72} are probably washed out of a thin bed of sand at a height of about twenty or thirty feet above the present sea-level, which is intersected by the river. The geological age of this bed cannot be very great, and it has clearly been formed since the present basin of the Ice Sound, or at least the greater part of it, has been hollowed out by glacial action."[16]

_The Miocene Arctic Flora._--One of the most startling and important of the scientific discoveries of the last forty years has been that of the relics of a luxuriant Miocene flora in various parts of the Arctic regions. It is a discovery that was totally unexpected, and is even now considered by many men of science to be completely unintelligible; but it is so thoroughly established, and it has such a direct and important bearing on the subjects we are discussing in the present volume, that it is necessary to lay a tolerably complete outline of the facts before our readers.

The Miocene flora of temperate Europe was very like that of Eastern Asia, j.a.pan, and the warmer part of Eastern North America of the present day. It is very richly represented in Switzerland by well preserved fossil remains, and after a close comparison with the flora of other countries Professor Heer concludes that the Swiss Lower Miocene flora indicates a climate corresponding to that of Louisiana, North Africa, and South China, while the Upper Miocene climate of the same country would correspond to that of the south of Spain, Southern j.a.pan, and Georgia (U.S. of America). Of this latter flora, found chiefly at Oeninghen in the northern extremity of Switzerland, 465 species are known, of which 166 species are trees or shrubs, half of them being evergreens. They comprise sequoias like the Californian giant trees, camphor-trees, cinnamons, sa.s.safras, bignonias, ca.s.sias, gleditschias, tulip-trees, and many other American genera, together with maples, ashes, planes, oaks, poplars, and other familiar European trees represented by a variety of extinct species. If we now go to the west coast of Greenland in 70 N. Lat. we find abundant remains of a flora of the same general {73} type as that of Oeninghen but of a more northern character. We have a sequoia identical with one of the species found at Oeninghen, a chestnut, salisburia, liquidambar, sa.s.safras, and even a magnolia. We have also seven species of oaks, two planes, two vines, three beeches, four poplars, two willows, a walnut, a plum, and several shrubs supposed to be evergreens; altogether 137 species, mostly well and abundantly preserved!

But even further north, in Spitzbergen, in 78 and 79 N. Lat. and one of the most barren and inhospitable regions on the globe, an almost equally rich fossil flora has been discovered including several of the Greenland species, and others peculiar, but mostly of the same genera. There seem to be no evergreens here except coniferae, one of which is identical with the swamp-cypress (_Taxodium distichum_) now found living in the Southern United States! There are also eleven pines, two Libocedrus, two sequoias, with oaks, poplars, birches, planes, limes, a hazel, an ash, and a walnut; also water-lilies, pond-weeds, and an iris--altogether about a hundred species of flowering plants. Even in Grinnell Land, within 8 degrees of the pole, a similar flora existed, twenty-five species of fossil plants having been collected by the last Arctic expedition, of which eighteen were identical with the species from other Arctic localities. This flora comprised poplars, birches, hazels, elms, viburnums, and eight species of conifers including the swamp cypress and the Norway spruce (_Pinus abies_) which last does not now extend beyond 69 N.

Fossil plants closely resembling those just mentioned have been found at many other Arctic localities, especially in Iceland, on the Mackenzie River in 65 N. Lat. and in Alaska. As an intermediate station we have, in the neighbourhood of Dantzic in Lat. 55 N., a similar flora, with the swamp-cypress, sequoias, oaks, poplars, and some cinnamons, laurels, and figs. A little further south, near Breslau, north of the Carpathians, a rich flora has been found allied to that of Oeninghen, but wanting in some of the more tropical forms. Again, in the Isle of Mull in Scotland, in about 56 N. Lat., a plant-bed has been discovered {74} containing a hazel, a plane, and a sequoia, apparently identical with a Swiss Miocene species.

We thus find one well-marked type of vegetation spread from Switzerland and Vienna to North Germany, Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and Spitzbergen, some few of the species even ranging over the extremes of lat.i.tude between Oeninghen and Spitzbergen, but the great majority being distinct, and exhibiting decided indications of a decrease of temperature according to lat.i.tude, though much less in amount than now exists. Some writers have thought that the great similarity of the floras of Greenland and Oeninghen is a proof that they were not contemporaneous, but successive; and that of Greenland has been supposed to be as old as the Eocene. But the arguments yet adduced do not seem to prove such a difference of age, because there is only that amount of specific and generic diversity between the two which might be produced by distance and difference of temperature, under the exceptionally equable climate of the period. We have even now examples of an equally wide range of well-marked types; as in temperate South America, where many of the genera and some of the species range from the Straits of Magellan to Valparaiso--places differing as much in lat.i.tude as Switzerland and West Greenland; and the same may be said of North Australia and Tasmania, where, at a greater lat.i.tudinal distance apart, closely allied forms of Eucalyptus, Acacia, Casuarina, Stylidium, Goodenia, and many other genera would certainly form a prominent feature in any fossil flora now being preserved.

_Mild Arctic Climates of the Cretaceous Period._--In the Upper Cretaceous deposits of Greenland (in a locality not far from those of the Miocene age last described) another remarkable flora has been discovered, agreeing generally with that of Europe and North America of the same geological age.

Sixty-five species of plants have been identified, of which there are fifteen ferns, two cycads, eleven coniferae, three monocotyledons, and thirty-four dicotyledons. One of the ferns is a tree-fern with thick stems, which has also been found in the Upper Greensand of England. Among the conifers the giant sequoias are found, and among {75} the dicotyledons the genera Populus, Myrica, Ficus, Sa.s.safras, Andromeda, Diospyros, Myrsine, Panax, as well as magnolias, myrtles, and leguminosae. Several of these groups occur also in the much richer deposits of the same age in North America and Central Europe; but all of them evidently afford such fragmentary records of the actual flora of the period, that it is impossible to say that any genus found in one locality was absent from the other merely because it has not yet been found there. On the whole, there seems to be less difference between the floras of Arctic and temperate lat.i.tudes in Upper Cretaceous than in Miocene times.

In the same locality in Greenland (70 33' N. Lat. and 52 W. Long.), and also in Spitzbergen, a more ancient flora, of Lower Cretaceous age, has been found; but it differs widely from the other in the great abundance of cycads and conifers and the scarcity of exogens, which latter are represented by a single poplar. Of the thirty-eight ferns, fifteen belong to the genus Gleichenia now almost entirely tropical. There are four genera of cycads, and three extinct genera of conifers, besides Glyptostrobus and Torreya now found only in China and California, six species of true pines, and five of the genus Sequoia, one of which occurs also in Spitzbergen. The European deposits of the same age closely agree with these in their general character, conifers, cycads, and ferns forming the ma.s.s of the vegetation, while exogens are entirely absent, the above-named Greenland poplar being the oldest known dicotyledonous plant.[17]

If we take these facts as really representing the flora of the period, we shall be forced to conclude that, measured by the change effected in its plants, the lapse of time between the Lower and Upper Cretaceous deposits was far greater than between the Upper Cretaceous and the Miocene--a conclusion quite opposed to the indications afforded by the mollusca and the higher animals of the two periods. It seems probable, therefore, that these Lower Cretaceous plants represent local peculiarities of {76} vegetation such as now sometimes occur in tropical countries. On sandy or coralline islands in the Malay Archipelago there will often be found a vegetation consisting almost wholly of cycads, pandani, and palms, while a few miles off, on moderately elevated land, not a single specimen of either of these families may be seen, but a dense forest of dicotyledonous trees covering the whole country. A lowland vegetation, such as that above described, might be destroyed and its remains preserved by a slight depression, allowing it to be covered up by the detritus of some adjacent river, while not only would the subsidence of high land be a less frequent occurrence, but when it did occur the steep banks would be undermined by the waves, and the trees falling down would be floated away, and would either be cast on some distant sh.o.r.e or slowly decay on the surface or in the depths of the ocean.

From the remarkable series of facts now briefly summarized, we learn, that whenever plant-remains have been discovered within the Arctic regions, either in Tertiary or Cretaceous deposits, they show that the climate was one capable of supporting a rich vegetation of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, similar in general character to that which prevailed in the temperate zone at the same periods, but showing the influence of a less congenial climate. These deposits belong to at least four distinct geological horizons, and have been found widely scattered within the Arctic circle, yet nowhere has any proof been obtained of intercalated cold periods, such as would be indicated by the remains of a stunted vegetation, or a molluscan fauna similar to that which now prevails there.

_Stratigraphical Evidence of Long-Continued Mild Arctic Conditions._--Let us now turn to the stratigraphical evidence, which, as we have already shown, offers a crucial test of the occurrence or non-occurrence of glaciation during any extensive geological period; and here we have the testimony of perhaps the greatest living authority on Arctic geology--Professor Nordenskjold. In his lecture on "The Former Climate of the Polar Regions," he says: "The character of the coasts in the Arctic regions is especially favourable to geological investigations. While the valleys are for the {77} most part filled with ice, the sides of the mountains in summer, even in the 80th degree of lat.i.tude, and to a height of 1,000 or 1,500 feet above the level of the sea, are almost wholly free from snow. Nor are the rocks covered with any amount of vegetation worth mentioning; and, moreover, the sides of the mountains on the sh.o.r.e itself frequently present perpendicular sections, which everywhere expose their bare surfaces to the investigator. The knowledge of a mountain's geognostic character, at which one, in the more southerly countries, can only arrive after long and laborious researches, removal of soil and the like, is here gained almost at the first glance; and as we have never seen in Spitzbergen nor in Greenland, in these sections often many miles in length, and including one may say all formations from the Silurian to the Tertiary, any boulders even as large as a child's head, there is not the smallest probability that strata of any considerable extent, containing boulders, are to be found in the polar tracts previous to the middle of the Tertiary period. Since, then, both an examination of the geognostic condition, and an investigation of the fossil flora and fauna of the polar lands, show no signs of a glacial era having existed in those parts before the termination of the Miocene period, we are fully justified in rejecting, on the evidence of actual observation, the hypotheses founded on purely theoretical speculations, which a.s.sume the many times repeated alternation of warm and glacial climates between the present time and the earliest geological ages."[18] And again, in his _Sketch of the Geology of Spitzbergen_, after describing the various formations down to the Miocene, he says: "All the fossils found in the foregoing strata show that Spitzbergen, during former geological ages, enjoyed a magnificent climate, which indeed was somewhat colder during the Miocene period, but was still favourable for an extraordinarily abundant vegetation, much more luxuriant than that which now occurs even in the southern part of Scandinavia: and I have in those strata sought in vain for any sign, that, as some geologists have of late endeavoured to render probable, these favourable climatic conditions have been broken off {78} by intervals of ancient glacial periods. The profiles I have had the opportunity to examine during my various Spitzbergen expeditions would certainly, if laid down on a line, occupy an extent of _a thousand English miles_; and if any former glacial period had existed in this region, there ought to have been some trace to be observed of erratic blocks, or other formations which distinguish glacial action. But this has not been the case. In the strata, whose length I have reckoned alone, I have not found a single fragment of a foreign rock so large as a child's head."[19]

Now it is quite impossible to ignore or evade the force of this testimony as to the continuous warm climates of the north temperate and polar zones throughout Tertiary times. The evidence extends over a vast area, both in s.p.a.ce and time, it is derived from the work of the most competent living geologists, and it is absolutely consistent in its general tendency. We have in the Lower Cretaceous period an almost tropical climate in France and England, a somewhat lower temperature in the United States, and a mild insular climate in the Arctic regions. In each successive period the climate becomes somewhat less tropical; but down to the Upper Miocene it remains warm temperate in Central Europe, and cold temperate within the polar area, with not a trace of any intervening periods of Arctic cold. It then gradually cools down and merges through the Pliocene into the glacial epoch in Europe, while in the Arctic zone there is a break in the record between the Miocene and the recent glacial deposits.[20]

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Accepting this as a substantially correct account of the general climatic aspect of the Tertiary period in the northern hemisphere, let us see whether the principles we have already laid down will enable us to give a satisfactory explanation of its causes.

_The Causes of mild Arctic Climates._--In his remarkable series of papers on "Ocean Currents," the late Dr. James Croll has proved, with a wealth of argument and ill.u.s.tration whose cogency is irresistible, that the very habitability of our globe is due to the equalizing climatic effects of the waters of the ocean; and that it is to the same cause that we owe, either directly or indirectly, almost all the chief diversities of climate between places situated in the same lat.i.tude. Owing to the peculiar distribution of land and sea upon the globe, more than its fair proportion of the warm equatorial waters is directed towards the western sh.o.r.es of Europe, the result being that the British Isles, Norway, and Spitzbergen, have all a milder climate than any other parts of the globe in corresponding lat.i.tudes. A very small portion of the Arctic regions, however, obtains this benefit, and it thus remains, generally speaking, a land of snow and ice, with too short a summer to nourish more than a very scanty and fugitive vegetation. The only other opening than that between Iceland and Britain by which warm water penetrates within the Arctic circle, is through Behring's Straits; but this is both shallow and limited in width, and the consequence is that the larger part of the warm currents of the Pacific turns back along the sh.o.r.es of the Aleutian Islands and North-west America, while a very small quant.i.ty enters the icy ocean.

But if there were other and wider openings into the Arctic Ocean, a vast quant.i.ty of the heated water which is now turned backward would enter it, and would produce an amelioration of the climate of which we can hardly form a conception. A great amelioration of climate would also be caused by the breaking up or the lowering of such {80} Arctic highlands as now favour the acc.u.mulation of ice; while the interpenetration of the sea into any part of the great continents in the tropical or temperate zones would again tend to raise the winter temperature, and render any long continuance of snow in their vicinity almost impossible.

Now geologists have proved, quite independently of any such questions as we are here discussing, that changes of the very kinds above referred to have occurred during the Tertiary period; and that there has been, speaking broadly, a steady change from a comparatively fragmentary and insular condition of the great north temperate lands in early Tertiary times, to that more compact and continental condition which now prevails. It is, no doubt, difficult and often impossible to determine how long any particular geographical condition lasted, or whether the changes in one country were exactly coincident with those in another; but it will be sufficient for our purpose briefly to indicate those more important changes of land and sea during the Tertiary period, which must have produced a decided effect on the climate of the northern hemisphere.

_Geographical Changes Favouring Mild Northern Climates in Tertiary Times._--The distribution of the Eocene and Miocene formations shows, that during a considerable portion of the Tertiary period, an inland sea, more or less occupied by an archipelago of islands, extended across Central Europe between the Baltic and the Black and Caspian Seas, and thence by narrower channels south-eastward to the valley of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, thus opening a communication between the North Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. From the Caspian also a wide arm of the sea extended during some part of the Tertiary epoch northwards to the Arctic Ocean, and there is nothing to show that this sea may not have been in existence during the whole Tertiary period. Another channel probably existed over Egypt[21] into the eastern {81} basin of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea; while it is probable that there was a communication between the Baltic and the White Sea, leaving Scandinavia as an extensive island. Turning to India, we find that an arm of the sea of great width and depth extended from the Bay of Bengal to the mouths of the Indus; while the enormous depression indicated by the presence of marine fossils of Eocene age at a height of 10,500 feet in Western Tibet, renders it not improbable that a more direct channel across Afghanistan may have opened a communication between the West Asiatic and Polar seas.

It may be said that the changes here indicated are not warranted by an actual knowledge of continuous Tertiary deposits over the situations of the alleged marine channels; but it is no less certain that the seas in which any particular strata were deposited were _always_ more extensive than the fragments of those strata now existing, and _often_ immensely more extensive. The Eocene deposits of Europe, for example, have certainly undergone enormous denudation both marine and subaerial, and may have once covered areas where we now find older deposits (as the chalk once covered the weald), while a portion of them may lie concealed under Miocene, Pliocene, or recent beds. We find them widely scattered over Europe and Asia, and often elevated into lofty mountain ranges; and we should certainly err far more seriously in confining the Eocene seas to the exact areas where we now find Eocene rocks, than in liberally extending them, so as to connect the several detached portions of the formation whenever there is no valid argument against our doing so. Considering then, that some one or more of the sea-communications here indicated almost certainly existed during Eocene and Miocene times, let us endeavour to estimate the probable effect such communications would have upon the climate of the northern hemisphere.

_The Indian Ocean as a Source of Heat in Tertiary Times._--If we compare the Indian Ocean with the South Atlantic we shall see that the position and outline of the former are very favourable for the acc.u.mulation of a large body of warm water moving northwards. Its southern {82} opening between South Africa and Australia is very wide, and the tendency of the trade-winds would be to concentrate the currents towards its north-western extremity, just where the two great channels above described formed an outlet to the northern seas. As will be shown in our nineteenth chapter, there was probably, during the earlier portion of the Tertiary period at least, several large islands in the s.p.a.ce between Madagascar and South India; but these had wide and deep channels between them, and their existence may have been favourable to the conveyance of heated water northward, by concentrating the currents, and thus producing ma.s.sive bodies of moving water a.n.a.logous to the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic.[22] Less heat would thus be lost by evaporation and radiation in the tropical zone, and an impulse would be acquired which would carry the warm water into the north polar area. About the same period Australia was probably divided into two islands, separated by a wide channel in a north and south direction (see Chapter XXII.), and through this another current would almost certainly set northwards, and be directed to the north-west by the southern extension of Malayan Asia. The more insular condition at this period of Australia, India, and North Africa, with the depression and probable fertility of the Central Asiatic plateau, would lead to the Indian Ocean being traversed by regular trade-winds instead of by variable monsoons, and thus the constant _vis a tergo_, which is so efficient in the Atlantic, would keep up a steady and powerful current towards the northern parts of the Indian Ocean, and thence through the midst of the European archipelago to the northern seas.