334 ON THE SUPPOSED GLACIAL EPOCH IN AUSTRALIA, 



ON THE SUPPOSED GLACIAL EPOCH IN AUSTRALIA. 



By Captain F. W. Hutton, F.G.S., 

 Hon. Mem. Lin. Soc, of N. S. Wales. 



Several geologists have imagined that the glacial epoch, which 

 overspread Europe and N. America in the pleistocene period, had 

 its counterpart at the same time in the Southern Hemisphere. 

 This northern glacial epoch is supposed, with great probability, to 

 have been due in large part to the high eccentricity of the earth's 

 orbit which occurred from 80,000 to 200,000 years ago ; since 

 which time the eccentricity has been diminishing. Reasons how- 

 ever have been repeatedly given by New Zealand Geologists for 

 dissenting from the idea that the Southern Hemisphere has suffered 

 a glacial epoch, and in my last papers on the subject, I pointed out 

 that high eccentricity would not produce a severe antarctic climate, 

 owing to the small quantity of land in this hemisphere which 

 is not already covered with snow ; but that high eccentricity 

 might produce a pluvial or diluvial epoch, (1) These reasons 

 I need not recapitulate ; but quite recently the new hypothesis 

 has been broached that the Southern Hemisphere has had a 

 small glacial epoch of its own some 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. 

 No attempt has been made to account for this remarkable episode. 

 It cannot have been due to great geographical changes in the 

 Antarctic OcSan, for that is disproved by the sliort time that has 

 since elapsed, and by the number of endemic species, and even 

 genera, of plants found in the Antarctic Islands. Neither can it 

 have been due to any astronomical or cosmical cause, because then 

 it would have affected the Northern Hemisphei*e as well. As 

 this hypothesis has been started by such a distinguished zoologist 



(1) N. Z. Journal of Science, Vol. II.. p. 266, and Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc, 

 Vol. 41, p. 213. 



