Park. — The Great Ice Age of New Zealand. 605 



Evidences of ancient glaciation have been also discovered in Victoria, 

 New South Wales, and South Australia. 



In 1872, Professor Agassiz, the celebrated Swiss naturalist and glaci- 

 alogist, as the result of his explorations, announced that the southern por- 

 tion of the South American continent, as far north as 37° S. latitude — that 

 is, for a distance of nearly 1,400 miles north of Cape Horn — was covered 

 with a continuous ice-sheet extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific 

 Ocean.* He stated that the movement of the ice was to the north, and 

 independent of the present slopes of the land. 



But, long prior to this, Darwin had called the attention of geologists 

 to the thick masses of boulder-clay and other evidences of glaciation at 

 Tierra del Fuego ; while, in 1870, Professor Dana,t a distinguished 

 American geologist, in his well-known work on " Geology," had stated 

 that glacial drift in South America is met with as far north towards the 

 Equator as 41° S. latitude. 



Professor Agassiz was the father and exponent of the theory of ancient 

 glaciation of northern Europe and America. It was he who in 1840 

 startled the geological world with the announcement that northern Europe 

 had been another Greenland, lying under a continuous sheet of land-ice — 

 a conclusion arrived at as the result of a close study of the EuK)pean Alps. 



The clamorous opposition to his views regarding the invasion of the 

 polar ice-sheet, mostly advanced by zoologists, was soon silenced ; and 

 in the early " forties," as a result of a tour through Scotland, accompanied 

 by tile veteran Dr. Buckland, he further announced that the northern 

 kingdom everywhere contained clear evidence of ancient glaciation. 



Subsequently, Darwin, Buckland, Sir Charles Lyell, Sir A. C. Ramsay, 

 Sir Archibald Geikie, and Professor Geikie verified the conclusions of Agas- 

 siz, and made fresh discoveries in England and North Wales, which, in the 

 late " forties," led to complete agreement among British geologists as to the 

 Pleistocene glaciation of Great Britain and Ireland by a sheet of land-ice 

 which was an extension of the north polar ice. 



Agassiz carried his observations to America, and in the early " fifties " 

 reported the discovery of evidence showing that a continuous ice-sheet 

 had extended down the Missouri Valley as far south as 41° N. latitude — a 

 conclusion now accepted by all American geologists. Later discoveries 

 liave shown that the southern limit of the Labradorianf ice-sheet reached 

 as far as 37° 30' N. latitude. 



The opinion of Agassiz, announced in 1872, that the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere had passed through a glacial period, or great Ice Age, in all respects 

 parallel with that in the Northern Hemisphere, is quoted approvingly by 

 Sir Archibald Geikie in his monumental text-book, by Professors Cham- 

 berlin and Salisbury in their comprehensive manuals, by Professor Prest- 

 wich in his well-known text-book ; and is challenged by none. On the 

 contrary, Prestwich in his glacial map of the Antarctic region shows the 

 southern portion of South America as glaciated with a continuous ice- 

 sheet up to 37° S. latitude, contemporaneously with the Glacial period of 

 the Northern Hemisphere. On the same map he shows that the greater 

 portion of the South Island of New Zealand was glaciated at the same 

 time. 



* Am. Jour. Sc, vol. iv, p. 1.35; 1872. 



t J. D. Dana, " Geology," 2nd ed., p. 540 ; 1870. 



% Chamberlin and Salisbury, " Geology," vol. i, ]i. 330. 



