332 CLIMATIC CONDITIONS OF THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 



In the same article, Abich remarks that he is unable, from personal inves- 

 tigations, to assert that the same condition of things, as to recession of the 

 glaciers indicated for the western half of the Caucasus, prevails in the eastern 

 portion of that range. He thinks it highly probable, however, that such is 

 the case ; at all events, that is the general opinion. 



In another article on the Caucasian glaciers.* the same author gives the 

 amount of recession of the Baksan glacier between the years 1849 and 1873, 

 as 600 feet; but in what year after 1849 the backward movement began he 

 was unable to state. 



The evidence here presented seems to be sufficient to justify the state- 

 ment previously made, that a diminution of all the glaciers of the great 

 mass of mountains extending between the Atlantic and the Caspian has 

 been going on for several years; that this change was not begun at the 

 same moment throughout the whole length of the more or less connected 

 ranges; but that it appears to have been first noticed as a fact of importance 

 in the region of Mont Blanc, and not until a considerable number of years 

 later in other regions east and west. It is also true that, although the state- 

 ment had been repeatedly made by various writers that this recession was 

 about to come to an end, and to be succeeded by a period of advance, such 

 had not been the case up to the end of the year 1881. 



That there have been oscillations of the glaciers of the Alps during the 

 historical period, however, and that the present condition of recession has 

 been preceded by others of advance as well as retreat, is a well-known fact, 

 although niunerical data are almost entirelv wanting. It is the belief of the 

 present writer that the glaciers of the Pyrenees, Alps, and Caucasus have 

 been gradually retreating since the time of their greatest extension, and that 

 there may have been many oscillations in the course of this general 

 recession; but that, on the whole, diminution has had the upper hand of 

 advance, and that the mass of ice and snow on the ranges of Southern Eiu'ope 

 is gradually growing smaller: a statement which would, if true, be entirely 

 in harmony with what has been set forth in the preceding chapter. It is a 

 ftict, however, that most geologists seem to look upon the " Glacial epoch " 

 as something long since gone by and done with, and to consider the climato- 

 logical condition of the present day as entirely disconnected with that which 

 happened during the "ice age," but this is not the result at which we have 



* Bulletin cle la Societe Iniperiale des N,^tm■alistes de Moscou, Tome XLVIII. (No. 3) p. 92. 



