60 Professor Broun on the Glacier Theory, 



this blossom is not, as I hope, for ever frozen in the ancient 

 universal ice ! I have termed this opponent the most alarm- 

 ing of all, because, being in part a spectre, it has nothing cor- 

 poreal about it upon which we can fasten, no foot that one can 

 impede, and no head which one can strike off ! Distinction 

 of species without difference of characters : in what way can 

 proof be adduced, and agairst what shall we bring proof? 

 " By the circumstances of their occurrence V In fossil spe- 

 cies, that means neither more nor less than their stratographi- 

 cal distribution, which merely comes to this : Whoever wishes 

 it, may declare that all the species of two periods are different, 

 and whoever wishes it, may declare that all the species of 

 two directly succeeding strata are different. It is true he can- 

 not prove it, but neither can he be refuted, because, according 

 to the hypothesis, no further proof is required. 



Let these glaciers move chiefly by the expansion of infiltrated 

 water instead of their own weight, — grant that they have po- 

 lished and furrowed many parts of the surface, that they have 

 heaped up moraines into heights and hollows, nay, into whole 

 mountains, where glaciers no longer occur, and that they prove 

 a lower temperature to have existed at the time of their for- 

 mer extension, — yet all is not glacier action which the hypo- 

 thesis declares to be such ; least of all can it be concluded 

 that the whole northern hemisphere was suddenly and simul- 

 taneously covered with a crust of ice as far as Mount Atlas, 

 and that the whole earth was repeatedly and interruptedly 

 suddenly cooled and then heated, in order alternately to freeze 

 and awaken different races of beings. I cannot in any measure 

 give my assent either to such doctrines, or to the opinion that 

 species can be recognised without distinctions being ascer- 

 tained, or established by characters which seem to have no 

 stability, supposing even that whole periods of the earth's his- 

 tory lay between them. For, if the petrifactions presented 

 to our investigation are to assist us in explaining the mys- 

 teries of the history of the globe, the value of these docu- 

 ments should not be destroyed by preconceived and arbitrary 

 assumptions.* 



* The above remarks form part of a Memoiv inserted in Lconhard and 

 Bronn's Jahrbucb for 1842^ 



