ALASKA DURING ICE AGE 
77 
the pushing out of the Keewatin ice-sheet from a low flat 
centre, without even a suggestion of a mountainous nucleus, 
to one thousand miles westward, while the Rocky Mountain 
glaciers were thrust eastward, but little beyond the foot¬ 
hills. 
The ice from this great centre of dispersion is supposed 
to have reached the mouth of the Mackenzie River close to 
the borders of Alaska. Nevertheless, the same authors (ac¬ 
knowledge that the plains of Alaska were apparently free from 
glaciation, even during the time when, two thousand miles 
further south, the waters of the Ohio and the Missouri were 
actually believed to have been turned from their courses by the 
encroaching ice-sheets. How can we reconcile the co-existence 
of these two extraordinary and altogether anomalous climatic 
conditions in adjoining parts of the same continent ? Surely 
there must be some mistake. At present there is far less pre¬ 
cipitation of moisture in the Keewatin region of Canada than 
in any of the western mountain ranges. The existing con¬ 
ditions of land and water must consequently have been entirely 
altered during the Glacial Epoch. Indeed, even our concep¬ 
tions of the nature of climates would have to undergo some 
change before we can realize how this stupendous ice-sheet 
in the Keewatin region came to be built up, while Alaska was 
only able to form a few local glaciers. In a previous chapter 
(p. 46) I ventured to make some critical remarks on the 
supposed gigantic ice-sheets of the Glacial Epoch, and I hope 
to show now that the biological evidences are altogether op¬ 
posed to the views that the Ice Age was an epoch of excep¬ 
tional cold. My criticisms on the current beliefs in the land- 
ice theory are by no means new. We need only peruse the 
fascinating volumes entitled “ Ice or Water ” published by 
Sir Henry Howorth, in which the claims of water as a power¬ 
ful agent in the formation of so-called glacial deposits are 
ably discussed. My object, however, in writing this work was 
not to investigate the origin of the Ice Age. This short 
digression into the domain of glacial geology merely serves 
to acquaint the general reader with some of the special 
difficulties we have to contend with in explaining certain 
phenomena connected with the Alaskan fauna. 
Since the beginning of the last century it was known that 
