370 
DARWINISM 
CHAP. 
lands ; and, in the next place, there is not a particle of direct 
evidence that any such lowering of temperature in inter- 
tropical lowlands ever took place. The only alleged evidence 
of the kind is that adduced by the late Professor Agassiz and 
Mr. Hartt; but I am informed by my friend, Mr. J. C. Branner 
(now State Geologist of Arkansas, U.S.), who succeeded Mr. 
Hartt, and spent several years completing the geological 
survey of Brazil, that the supposed moraines and glaciated 
granite rocks near Bio Janeiro and elsewhere, as well as the 
so-called boulder-clay of the same region, are entirely ex¬ 
plicable as the results of sub-aerial denudation and weathering, 
and that there is no proof whatever of glaciation in any 
part of Brazil. 
Loiver Temperature not needed to Explain the Facts. 
But any such vast physical change as that suggested by 
Darwin, involving as it does such tremendous issues as re¬ 
gards its effects on the tropical fauna and flora of the whole 
world, is really quite uncalled for, because the facts to be 
explained are of the same essential nature as those presented 
by remote oceanic islands, between which and the nearest con¬ 
tinents no temperate land connection is postulated. In pro¬ 
portion to their limited area and extreme isolation, the Azores, 
St. Helena, the Galapagos, and the Sandwich Islands, each 
possess a fairly rich—the last a very rich—indigenous flora; 
and the means which sufficed to stock them with a great 
variety of plants would probably suffice to transmit others 
from mountain-top to mountain-top in various parts of the 
globe. In the case of the Azores, we have large numbers of 
species identical with those of Europe, and others closely allied, 
forming an exactly parallel case to the species found on the 
various mountain summits which have been referred to. The 
distances from Madagascar to the South African mountains 
and to Kilimandjaro, and from the latter to Abyssinia, are no 
greater than from Spain to the Azores, while there are other 
equatorial mountains forming stepping-stones at about an 
equal distance to the Cameroons. Between Java and the 
Himalayas we have the lofty mountains of Sumatra and of 
North-western Burma, forming steps at about the same distance 
apart; while between Kini Balu and the Australian Alps we 
