18431882] CLIMATE 457 



knowledge is sufficient for this deduction : turning to the Letter 347 

 S. hemisphere, it might be argued that a greater extent of 

 water made the temperature lower ; and when much of the 

 northern land was lower, it would have been covered by the 

 sea and intermigration between Old and New Worlds would 

 have been checked. Secondly, I -doubt whether any infer- 

 ence on nature of climate can be deduced from extinct 

 species of mammals. If the musk-ox and deer of great size 

 of your Barren-Grounds had been known only by fossil bones, 

 who would have ventured to surmise the excessively cold 

 climate they lived under? With respect to food of large 

 animals, if you care about the subject will you turn to my 

 discussion on this subject partly in respect to the ElepJias 

 primigenius in my Journal of Researches (Murray's Home 

 and Colonial Library), Ch. V., p. 85. 1 In this country we 

 infer from remains of Elephas primigenius that the climate 

 at the period of its embedment was very severe, as seems 

 countenanced by its woolly covering, by the nature of the 

 deposits with angular fragments, the nature of the co- 

 embedded shells, and co-existence of the musk-ox. I had 

 formerly gathered from Lyell that the relative position of 

 the Megatherium and Mylodon with respect to the Glacial 

 deposits, had not been well made out ; but perhaps it has 

 been so recently. Such are my reasons for not as yet 

 admitting the warmer period subsequent to Glacial epoch ; 

 but I daresay I may be quite wrong, and shall not be at all 

 sorry to be proved so. 



I shall assuredly read your essay with care, for I have 

 seen as yet only a fragment, and very likely some parts, 

 which I could not formerly clearly understand, will be clear 

 enough. 



1 " The firm conviction of the necessity of a vegetation possessing a 

 character of tropical luxuriance to support such large animals, and the 

 impossibility of reconciling this with the proximity of perpetual congela- 

 tion, was one chief cause of the several theories of sudden revolutions of 

 climate. ... I am far from supposing that the climate has not changed 

 since the period when these animals lived, which now lie buried in the 

 ice. At present I only wish to show that as far as quantity of food alone 

 is concerned, the ancient rhinoceroses might have roamed over the 

 steppes of Central Siberia even in their present condition, as well as the 

 living rhinoceroses and elephants over the karoos of Southern Africa" 

 (Journal of Researches , p. 89, 1888). 



