Fossils from the Miura Peninsula and its Immediate North. '25 



It may not be quite out of place here to say a few words on 

 the remains of the Pleistocene glaciers which, in 191] I said, wore 

 entirely wanting in Japan. Soon after that, a German geo- 

 grapher, Dr. A. Hettneb, came to Japan and during his trip to 

 the so-called Japanese Alps in Shinano asserted that he had dis- 

 covered glacial scratches on blocks of stone found in the valley of 

 the Azusagawa. On hearing this, several of our scientists went to 

 see them, and one of them was rash enough to say that they are 

 undoubtedly glacial scratches and that the only question is when 

 they were made. Subsequently, however, the late Tetsunosuke 

 Kato went to the place, made a careful research, and declared the 

 so-called glacial scratches to have been caused during a landslide. 

 I myself have not yet had an opportunity to examine them, but 

 so much I can say now that even if those scratches be due to the 

 action of ice, I see no need of modifying my previous assertion 

 above alluded to, for, during the Pliocene time, when colder 

 waters flowed near Central Japan than now, the Japanese Alps 

 which even at present are snow-clad during the greater part of the 

 year, if they were then high enough, would most likely have 

 formed glaciers whose remains we should still see in many parts of 

 the mountains. Such glaciers, however, glaciers in the sense of 

 those of the great Ice-age of the West, according to my own 

 opinion, did not exist, or eL-e the scratches would be more widely 

 distributed and not restricted to any single valley. Moreover, if 

 glaciers were present, there must be also smoothed rocks, erratic 

 1 »locks, boulder-clays, etc., which in the once ice-covered regions 

 of Europe and America are very widely spread and can hardly 

 escape the e}^es even of a casual observer. From these consider- 

 ations I deem the opinion of Kato as more probable, inasmuch as 

 landslides are of frequent occurrence in Shinano. 



I shall recur to the question of the climate of the past geo- 

 logical ages in future papers on the fossils of the Upper Musashino 

 and of the still younger formations which I intend to publish as 

 soon as circumstances will permit. 



1) Climatic Changes in Japan since the Pliocene Epoch, p. 3. Journ. Coll. Sei., Imp. Univ. 

 Tokyo, 1911, Vol. XXXU. Art. 5. 



