Trans. N. V. Ac. Set. 84 April 14, 



Dr. N. L. Britton exhibited specimens of the wild liquorice 

 bean of Brazil, which was poisonous to animals 



Prof. Charles B. Warring, Ph.D., of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., 

 then read a paper on 



THE UNIFORMITY OF GEOLOGICAL CLIMATE IN HIGH LATITUDES. 



(Abstract.) 



Geologists have confined themselves, in reference to ancient climate, 

 to finding the cause of the remarkable warmth in polar regions. But 

 there is another question of equal importance, perhaps even of greater. 

 I mean the question of uniformity, not of heat merely, but of light and 

 actinic force. That there was summer warmth is unquestionable. Was 

 there winter warmth correspondingly high ? Were light and actinic 

 force crowded into a brief summer, or were they distributed through 

 the year with a near approach to equality, as happens now in low lati" 

 tudes? 



The only means of answering these questions is found in the records 

 of plant and animal life. 



Their more obvious teachings are startling enough. Magnificent for- 

 ests of magnolias, cypresses, and a hundred other species, flourished in 

 Spitzbergen, and even farther north, as late as the Miocene, while in 

 earlier times identical species were found from the extreme north to 

 the equator. To this all geologists agree. The living forms to which 

 those species were most closely allied are peculiarly sensitive to 

 changes of temperature.* So far, therefore, as it is possible to judge 

 the past from the present, there must have been a warm and uni- 

 form temperature almost to the poles. 



It may be said that no very certain conclusions can be drawn from 

 these facts because the identical species are no longer living, and per- 

 haps they may not have been so very sensitive to cold as are their low- 

 latitude successors. While there is some force in this, we must not 

 give it too much weight, for all progress in the world's past history rests 

 upon the belief that, in general, corals in Palaeozoic times indicate 

 such conditions as exist where we now find corals ; saurians, where we 

 now find saurians ; magnolias, where we now find magnolias ; tree- 

 ferns, where we now find tree-ferns ; and so of other organisms. In 

 fact, we have no other principle to guide us. But we have direct 

 proof of the warmth of climate in the Miocene in Arctic regions. In 

 latitude 78° 56' N. (in Spitzbergen), amid a Miocene flora remarkable 



* If Huxley's Homotaxy is true, the same species lived first in high latitudes and then in low, 

 or vice versa. The important point for my present purpose is that the same species flourished 

 in regions where life conditions now are fo extremely unlike. 



