CHAP. XIII. FORMER MILD CLIMATE OF GREENLAND. 237 



suspecting that Scandinavia or Scotland or Wales were ever 

 in the same glacial condition as Greenland now is, we miist 

 not imagine that the contemporaneous fauna and flora were 

 everywhere poor and stunted, or that they may not, espe- 

 cially at the distance of a few hundred miles in a southward 

 direction, have been very luxuriant. 



Another series of observations made by Captain Graah, 

 during a survey of Greenland between 1823 and 1829, and 

 by Dr. Pingel in 1830-32, adds not a little to the geological 

 interest of the " outskirts," in their bearing on glacial pheno- 

 mena of ancient date. Those Danish investigators, with one 

 of whom. Dr. Pingel, I conversed at Copenhagen in 1834^ 

 ascertained that the whole coast fx^om lat. 60° to about 70° north 

 has been subsiding for the last four centuries, so that some 

 ancient piles driven into the beach to support the boats of the' 

 settlers have been gradually submerged, and wooden build- 

 ings have had to be repeatedly shifted farther inland.* 



In Norway and Sweden, instead of such a subsiding move- 

 ment, the land is slowly rising; but we have only to suppose 

 that formerly, when it was covered like Greenland with conti- 

 nental ice, it sank at the rate of several feet in a century, and 

 we shall be able to explain wh}^ marine deposits are found 

 above the level of the sea, and why these generally overlie 

 polished and striated surfaces of rock. 



We know that Greenland was not always covered with 

 snow and ice, for when we examine the tertiary strata of 

 Disco Island (of the upper miocene period) we discover there 

 a multitude of fossil plants, which demonstrate that, like 

 many other parts of the arctic regions, it formerly enjoyed a 

 mild and genial climate. Among the fossils brought from 

 that island, lat. 70° JST., Professor Heer has i-ecognized 

 Sequoia JLangsdorfii, a coniferous species which flourished 

 throughout a great part of Europe in the miocene period, 



® Principles of Geology, ch. xxx. 



