460 Climate of the Glacial Period. (October, 
brought from Atanekerdluk, North Greenland, situated in 
lat. 70° N., had been examined by him. Amongst the trees, 
the most abundant is the Sequoia Langsdorfit, the nearest 
living ally of which is the Sequota sempervirens, not now found 
farther north than lat. 53°, and which requires a mean annual 
temperature of at least 49° F., and that in winter the thermo- 
meter should not fall below 34° F. Cones of a magnolia 
have been found, proving, as Lyell has remarked, that this 
splendid tree not only lived, but ripened its fruit within the 
Arctic Circle. Vines also ‘‘twined round the forest trees, 
and broad-leaved ferns grew beneath their shade.’”* Some 
of the trunks of trees:observed were thicker than a man’s 
body, and one seen by Captain Inglefield stood upright as it 
had grown. 
Nor, as we have seen, did this Early Tertiary flora end in 
Greenland, but is found, containing a large number of species 
of trees, in Spitzbergen, in lat. 78°56’ N., or about 11° from 
the Pole. Prof. Heer considers that the winter temperature 
in Greenland could never have fallen below 34° F., and says— 
‘These conclusions are only links in the grand chain of 
evidence obtained from the examination of the Miocene flora 
of the whole of Europe. They prove to us that we could 
not, by any re-arrangement of the relative positions of land 
and water, produce for the northern hemisphere a climate 
‘which would explain the phenomena in a satisfactory way. 
We must admit that we are face to face with a problem 
whose solution in all probability must be attempted, and 
we doubt not, completed by the astronomer.” 
Whilst there are many reasons, as I have shown in the 
first part of this paper, for believing that the mean tem- 
perature of England might be greatly reduced by geographical 
changes, there is nothing whatever to lead us to conclude 
that the present mean temperature of Spitzbergen could 
be raised by any alteration of the relative positions of the 
sea and the land. By the present arrangement a large body 
of warm water is poured past that island, deflecting the iso- 
thermal lines in a great tongue northwards, which embraces 
it in its apex; and no conceivable geographical re-arrange- 
ment could raise its mean temperature more above that due 
to its latitude than what is effected at present. 
No re-distribution of land and water could compensate 
for the length of the Arctic night. Lyell has speculated 
on the possibility of the trees living without light for months, 
and thinks they might survive through the long darkness. 
* Student’s Elements of Geology, p. 223. 
