592 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



not of this kind, and to these I hope next year to call your 

 attention ; but the particular class of legends relating to the 

 deluge has probably sprung from suggestions inspired by keen 

 eyes and inquiring brains seeking to account for geological 

 puzzles. 



There is one thing which, it is only honest to say, 

 troubles rne and prevents my wholly accepting the " observa- 

 tion-myth " explanation. I cannot help thinking that at some 

 exceedingly ancient date the world, or a large part of the then 

 known world, was really visited by some great catastrophe. 

 Major-General Schaw lately gave us his interesting paper on 

 the Great Ice Age,* but neither in his paper nor, curiously 

 enough, in the discussion that followed was mention made 

 of the suddenness with which the climatic alteration was 

 effected. The mammoths whose remains have been exhumed 

 in thousands in Siberia were victims of some sudden calamity. 

 In full vigour of life they were frozen up and preserved. So 

 also with the vegetable remains now to be found in the polar 

 regions. The stumps of magnolias, walnuts, limes, vines, and 

 mimosas (which prove a luxuriant flora and almost tropical 

 climate to have existed in Greenland and Spitzbergen) had 

 not time to decompose and rot before the Terrible Age of the 

 world set in.f That the calamity was accompanied by great 

 cold appears to be taught by one of the oldest religious books 

 in the world, the Zend Avesta of the Parsis. In this book 

 the first Fargard of the Vendidad describes the creation of the 

 world by the great spirit Ahura Mazda ; and the second Far- 

 gard speaks thus: "The Maker, Ahura Mazda, of high re- 

 nown in the Airyana Vaego, by the good Eiver JJaitya, called 

 together a meeting of the celestial gods. . . . And Ahura 

 Mazda spoke unto Yima, saying, ' O fair Yima, son of Vivan- 

 ghat, upon the material world the fatal winters are going to 

 fall that shall bring the fierce foul frost ; upon the material 

 world the fatal winters are going to fall that shall make snow- 



* See above, p. 513. 



f As it was stated at the time this paper was read that the age of the 

 luxuriant vegetation at the north pole was somewhere in the Tertiary 

 period, and long antecedent to man's appearance on earth, I beg to be 

 allowed to add the following quotation from a paper by the distinguished 

 scientist, Sir Archibald Geikie, Director-General of the Geological Survey 

 of Great Britain ("Smithsonian Report" for 1892): " There cannot be 

 any doubt that after man had become a denizen of the earth a great 

 physical change came over the Northern Hemisphere. The climate, 

 which had previously been so mild that evergreen trees nourished within 

 ten or twelve degrees of the north pole, now became so severe that vast 

 sheets of snow and ice covered the north of Europe. . . . Such a 

 marvellous transformation in climate, in scenery, and in inhabitants 

 . . . is surely entitled to rank as a catastrophe in the history of the 

 globe. It was probably brought about mainly, if not entirely, by the 

 operation of forces external to the earth." 



