12 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



remotest times, for there are no sigus of glaciation iu Japan proper. 



Although Fusi-Yama (which, according to Japanese tradition, grew in a 

 few days imder the eyes of men, as lorullo did), reared its imposing cone on 

 the sea-board plain, that recently elevated region is but a narrow strip 

 along the shore, and ice-marks ought to be seen on the flanks of its main 

 chain of ancient hills, if the glacial epoch prevailed over the whole of the 

 northern hemisphere simultaneously. But an inteUigent traveller who 

 has lately ridden over the interior of the island from north to south 

 informed me that there were none visible on their eastern side ; and the 

 talented author of " Frost and Fire " — ]\Ii-. Campbell — has sought there also 

 in vain for any testimony of the rocks to the continued reign of the first, 

 whose signs are so familiar to him. 



A deflection of the Pacific or Japan stream which flows on past the Kurile 

 Islands, cm-ving round by the Aleutian chain to the coasts of Oregon, 

 causing a rainfall there nearly equal to that of Darjeeling in the Himalayas, 

 would bring ice over the terraced gardens on the slopes of the " Matchless 

 Mountain," and over the whole of Yesso ; opposite the northern shores of 

 which for many miles off the land, the sea is frozen every winter, in the 

 latitude of Naples, in consequence of then- being swept by that current 

 which, escaping through narrow portals, flows roimd into the Yellow Sea, 

 chilling the coasts of China. The British colony of Vancouver and 

 Washington Territory, instead of being enveloped in fogs, would be reduced 

 to the condition in which Britain itself was when no Gulf Stream came 

 near its shores, and to which Greenland has been brought in recent times. 



There not very long ago the oak grew, and animals throve where ice- 

 streams now flow, and there was a time stUl more remote when the magnolia 

 blossomed and the vine clung to giant sequoias in its forests ; and there may 

 be another not so very far distant when the magnetic current (which may 

 be the cause that produces this intense cold) may vary its du-ection and go 

 further east again, and the eastern branch of the Gulf Stream may flow 

 inside of Iceland ; there Norway and Scandinavia will agam have their age 

 of ice, whilst the " lost laud" may once more merit its now inappropriate 

 name and be covered with green woods. It may be when the present 

 Arctic Expedition returns, evidences will be produced of semi-tropical vege- 

 tation having flourished in still higher latitudes again at later geological 

 eras than when the carboniferous vegetation prepared the material for the 

 coal of high northern regions. Such a discovery as that the Pole itself is 

 now situated iu the centre of a land, in former ages covered with umbrageous 

 forests, would clash violently with existing theories. '•' '■^^ 



Every process of evolution may, of course, be more readily conceived to 

 be possible by assigning imlimited time for its performance. But if the 



