116 THE GLACIER EPOCH OF AUSTRALASIA. 
of our own country, for evidence of this kind, not only is such 
evidence completely wanting, but the facts are of so definite 
a character as to satisfy most geologists that it can never 
have existed ; and the same may be said of temperate North 
America and of the Arctic regions generally.” 
Mr. Searles V. Wood, junr., who wrote a remarkably able 
paper on “The Climate Controversy,” is quoted by Dr. 
Wallace in support of this conclusion, as follows :— 
“Now the Eocene formation is complete in England, and 
is exposed in continuous sections along the north coast of the 
Isle of Wight from its base to its junction with the Oligocene 
(or Lower Miocene according to some) and along the northern 
coast of Kent from its base to the lower Bagshot Sand. It 
has been intersected by railway and other cuttings in all 
directions and at all horizons, and pierced by wells mnumer- 
able; while from its strata in England, France, and Belgium 
the most extensive collections of organic remains have been 
made of any formation yet explored, and from nearly all its 
horizons, for at one place or another nearly every horizon may 
be said to have yielded fossils of some kind. These fossils, 
however, whether they be the remains of a flora, such as that 
of Sheppey, or of a vertebral fauna, containing the crocodile 
and alligator, such as is yielded by beds indicative of terres- 
trial conditions, or of a molluscan assemblage, such as is 
present in marine or flurio-marine beds of the formation, are 
of unmistakably ¢vopical or sub-tropical character throughout ; 
and no trace whatever has appeared of the intercalation of a 
glacial period, much less of successive intercalations indicative of 
more than one period of 10,500 years glaciation. Nor can it be 
urged that the glacial epochs of the Eocene in England were 
intervals of dry land, and so have left no evidence of their 
existence behind them, because a large part of the continuous 
sequence of Eocene deposits in this country consists of alter- 
nations of fluriatile, fluvio-marine, and purely marine strata ; 
so that it seems impossible, that, during the accumulation of 
the Eocene formation in England, a glacial period could have 
occurred without its evidences being abundantly apparent. 
The Oligocene of Northern Germany and Belgium and the 
Miocene of these countries and of France, have also afforded. 
a rich mollusean fauna, which, like that of the Eocene, has as 
yet presented no indication of the intrusion of anything to 
interfere with its uniformly sub-tropical character.”* 
Dr. Wallace, in confirmation, goes on to say + :—‘* When we 
consider that this enormous series of deposits, many thousand 
feet in thickness, consists wholly of alternation of clays, 
sands, marls, shales, or limestones, with a few beds of pebbles 
* Geol. Magazine, 1876, p. 392: Island Life, pp, 173-174. 
t Island Life, pp. 174, 175. 
