COLD AND ICE ON THE EARTH 



describe the glaciers of the Alps and of the Canadian 

 Rockies as the last relics existing to-day of the great Ice 

 Age of the past. The retreat to the Arctic Circle left 

 many other relics behind it, the great lakes, for ex- 

 ample, like Winnipeg and Manitoba, and the Great Salt 

 Lake of Utah. All were once mightier sheets, because 

 during the Ice Age their waters were held back. Other 

 smaller lakes formed by the dumping-heaps or terminal 

 moraines of the glaciers still exist, and are especially 

 noticeable in Finland. During the later stages of the Ice 

 Age the level of the land was lower than it is now in 

 Western Europe. When the ground began to rise in 

 slow upheavals with long pauses for rest it left its im- 

 press in raised beaches, which can be seen on both sides 

 of Scotland and on the Norwegian coast. The climate 

 grew gradually milder, the animals and the plants 

 followed in the train of the retreating ice, and even the 

 traces of man's existence began to appear. The change 

 was not sudden ; it was so gradual that the Ice Age 

 slipped as imperceptibly as its own glaciers into the age 

 in which Man's activities in Europe began. 



77 



