1905-6.] Is BELIEF IN A GLACIAL PERIOD JUSTIFIED? 283 
blooded reptiles cannot live in icy water and semi-tropical plants, or those 
whose habitat is the temperate zone, cannot ripen and sow their seeds, 
under arctic conditions. Thus if the so-called glacial phenomenon was 
a recurrent event, we ought to find evidences of it in the paleontological 
record, failing this the entire theory necessarily collapses. On the con- 
trary the flora and fauna exhibit no indications of violent changes, hot to 
cold and from cold to hot periods. The continuity of forces, particularly 
in the class of reptiles, from the carboniferous to the cretaceous period, 
is entirely opposed to the intercalation of glacial epochs, corresponding 
in importance to that of the post-Pliocene. 
J. Geikie claims-that finding the remains of the hyena, the lion 
and the canary laurel associated with those of the musk sheep, reindeer 
and the polar willow is a proof of interglacial climates, but the evidence 
is that they lived together at the same time, for we find all over France, 
Germany and South Britain, reindeer bones mixed with hyena, and 
gnawed by hyznas and we also find arctic willow leaves mixed with 
those of the canary laurel and the fig. This is only an illustration of the 
adaptability of those usually associated with northern climates, with those 
of a more southern origin, brought about by a change of climate, but 
certainly insufficient to have resulted in a glacial epoch. At the present 
time we have the reindeer and the tiger living together in Manchuria, 
but who would postulate a glacial period on such evidence? 
The removal of the fauna and flora, of which there is positively no 
evidence that they were ever associated with an ice age; the impossibility 
of finding a single terminal moraine, except in the vicinity of high moun- 
tains, the proofs that till and léss are not terminal moraines, the proof 
that in high northern latitudes, the trend of erratics is northwards; the 
impossibility of an extensive ice cap on our western plains having ever 
existed, without leaving clear and-distinct marks of its passage; and the 
proofs that vast floods have taken place during the Pleistocene epoch, 
practically reduce the supposed evidences of a glacial period and a single 
one at that (for otherwise had there been alterations indisputable marks 
would have been left at least on the Canadian Laurentian rocks) prac- 
tically to the supposed erosive power of ice, erratics, till and strie marks. 
In the northern hemisphere glacial action is wholly wanting from the 
White Sea eastward to about the vicinity of the MacKenzie River. This 
is generally conceded. Also, since on the fringe of the Arctic Ocean 
the trend of boulders is northerly, it follows, that it could not have had a 
pressure from the pole as postulated by Croll and Geikie, but that its 
summit of action must have been considerably to the south of the Arctic 
Ocean, that is, if it ever existed at all. 
