A Period in the History of our Planet, 23 



sure, have not yet been made public, but the result of ^hich 

 has been communicated to me privately, afford strong grounds 

 for doubting the fact of the elevation of the diluvial strata by 

 the Eastern Alps, which De Beaumont makes the pillar of his 

 theory, and lead rather to the supposition that the Eastern 

 Alpine chain arose contemporaneously with that of Mont 

 Blanc, and anteriorly to the formation of the diluvium, and 

 consequently, that it already existed in its entire grandeur when 

 the glacial period commenced. If the result of these last in- 

 quiries, so opposite to that of M. de Beaumont's, shall turn out 

 to be correct, we can assign no cause proceeding from the in- 

 terior of the earth, no geological cause, if I may use the expres- 

 sion, for the retreat of the ice coverings, but must seek it, where 

 we must seek likewise for the causes of the appearance of a glacial 

 period, in the empire of conjecture, or in the mean time rest 

 satisfied with the facts, without knowing their connection with 

 the history of the earth in general. 



Whether, however, we seek for its cause in the changeable 

 condition of the sun, in a periodicity of the light and heat 

 which it causes, in a change of the atmosphere, in an elevar 

 tion of the internal temperature of the earth, in a changed 

 position of its axis to the sun, or in an universal definite move- 

 ment of our solar system in space — and both for and against 

 each and all of these suppositions there are probabilities 

 enough — the retreat did commence. But it was not a hasty 

 flight into a lurking corner in the mountains which opened 

 the wide land to creation ; it was a slow deliberate retreat 

 which ceded the so long occupied field only inch by inch. 



It was the plains which first freed themselves from their 

 torpid covering. Where the long level tracts of Northern Ger- 

 many, of Kussia, and of France extend, there, under the in- 

 fluence of a warmer sun — a sun such as shines upon us at the 

 present day — the snowy covering first began to dissolve, and 

 by the trickling in of the water, and its re-congelation in the 

 interstices of the looser snow strata, to change into more com- 

 pact ice. With this transmutation of snow into ice, were at- 

 tended two important circumstances, namely, the movement of 

 the masses of ice in the direction of the superficial slope, and their 

 effects upon the solid ground on which they rested. A stirring 



