3S6 NATURAL SCIENCE [December 



be brought forward. Neither of the rival glacial theories requires 

 belief in the annihilation of all living things in our area. On the 

 land-ice hypothesis there must have been a now submerged tract 

 bordering on the Atlantic, and stretching beyond the present 

 south coast of Ireland, which the late Professor Carvill Lewis recog- 

 nised as an unglaciated area. A similar elevation to the west of 

 our present British islands is believed to have accompanied the 

 submergence by which the other school of geologists explain the 

 Pleistocene deposits. And it is generally agreed that the south 

 and, in part at least, the midland areas of England were free from 

 glacial conditions. When we remember how distinctly temperate 

 and even sub -tropical forms of life can be found to-day close to 

 areas of glaciation, it must be admitted that there is no impossibility 

 in the suggestion that the ancestors of the older plants and animals 

 which we now see around us witnessed in our territory the coming 

 and passing away of the age of ice. 



Geo. H. Carpenter. 



