208 WARREN UPHAM, ESQ., ON CAUSES OF THE ICE AOE. 



•^vliich together were probably a huiiflred times as long as 

 the Quaternary era in which the Ice Age occurred.* But 

 Ave have no evidence of any Tertiary or Mesozoic period 

 i^i' general glaciation in circumpolar and temperate regions, 

 although high mountain groups or ranges are known to 

 have had local glaciers. Not until we go back to the 

 Permian period, closing the Paleozoic era, are numerous 

 and widely rHstributed proofs of Yury ancient glaciation 

 encountered. Boulder-bearing deposits, sometimes closely 

 resembling till and including striated stones, while the 

 underlying rock also occasionally bears glacial grooves and 

 stiite, are found in the Carboniferous or more frequently 

 the Permian series in Britain, France and Germany,! Natal, + 

 Iiidia,§ and south-eastern Australia.|| In Natal the striated 

 glacier iloor is in latitude 30° south, and in India only 20° 

 north of the equator. Dtuing all the earth's history previous 

 to the Ice age, which constitutes its latest completed 

 chapter, no other such distinct evidences of general or inter- 

 rupted and alternating glaciation have been found ; and 

 just then, in close relationship Avitli extensive and repeated 

 oscillations of the land, and with widely distant glacial 

 deposits and striation, we find a most remarkable epoch of 

 mountain-building, surpassing any other time between the 

 close of the Archean era and the Quaternary. 

 1") Alfred Russel Wallace therefore concludes that eccentri- 

 city of the earth's orbit, though tending to produce a glacial 

 period, is insufficient without the concurrence of high uplifts 

 of the areas glaciated.lF He thinks that the time of increased 



* Climate and Time, chap, xix, with phite iv, representing the variations 

 in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit for three million years before A D. 

 1800, and one million years after it. Compare Am. Jour. Sci., Ill, 

 vol. XX, pp. 105-111, with plate, Aug., 1880. 



+ Climate and Time, chap, xviii ; Wallace's hland Life, chap. ix. 



t Quarterly -Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xxvi, 1870, pp. 

 514-517 ; vol. xxvii, 1871, pp. 57-60. 



§ Manual of the Geology of India, part 1, pp. xxxv-xxxviii, 102, 109-11 2, 

 229. 



II Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xliii, 1887, pp. 190-196. Die carbone 

 E'szeit, by Dr. W. Waagen, in Jahrhuch d. k. k. geol. Reichsanstalt, Vienna, 

 1888, vol. xxxvii, part 2, pp. 143-192 (reviewed in the Am. Geologist, 

 vol. ii, pp. 336-340, Nov., 1888). Carbonferous Glaciation in the Southern 

 a.'i^d Eastern Htmispheres, witit some notes on the Glossopteris Flora, bv C 

 I). White. A7n. Geologist, vol. iii, pp 299-330, May, 1889, very fully 

 (H<cu-ses the evidences of this exceedingly ancient Ice Age. witli citations 

 of its liteia*^ure for Africa, Intlia, and Australia. 



If Island Life, chaj)s. viii, ix, and xxiv. 



