ANOTHEK POSSIBLE CAUSE OF THE GLACIAL EPOCH. 151 



Europe a few words may be added to those in a previous 

 page. It has been estabhshed as above stated, by the 

 observations of Mr. Godwin-Austen,* Prestwich,t Delesse,t 

 and Eupert Jones, § that the platform upon which they are 

 built was elevated to the extent of the 100-fathom line, 

 owing to which Great Britain was united to Europe on the 

 east and Ireland on the west. The distribution of the land 

 fauna and flora requires such an hypothesis ; as does the 

 extension of the glaciers and sheets of ice over the area of 

 the Irish Sea and the isles which border the western coasts 

 of Ireland and Scotland from their centres of dispersion. At 

 the time of this elevation, which, according to Mr. Godwin- 

 Austen, was the close of the Pliocene period, Snowdon 

 would have reached an elevation of 4,200 feet, Ben Nevis 

 and Ben Mac Dhui about 5,000 feet each, and the Reeks, 

 1,014 feet. The whole region Avould have suffered a con- 

 siderable decrease of temperature as compared with that of 

 the present day ; and, if in addition to this cause of in- 

 creased cold, we add that arising from a reduction in the 

 temperature of the Gulf Stream, we seem to be warranted in 

 Domnig to the conclusion that such physical conditions 

 would have brought about a glacial climate in this region. 



Region of the Mediterranean, Soutltern Europe and Western 

 Ada. — It maybe objected that the hypothesis here advocated 

 is insufficient to account for the colder conditions of climate 

 which affected Southern Europe and the regions bordering 

 the Mediterranean and extending eastward to the Himalayas, 

 rhroughout all these regions we have evidence that the 

 climate was colder than at present during the Pleistocene 

 period, resulting in the extension of the glaciers in the Alps, 

 the Pyrenees, Caucasus and the Himalayas themselves ; while, 

 IS Sir Joseph Hooker has shown, glaciers were formed 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. vi, p. 69. 



t Geology, vol. i, p. 118, and vol. vii, p. 118. 



i Lithologie des mers de Francs (1871). 



I " Antiquity of Man," Rep. Croydon Micros. Club, 1877, p. 2. This 

 paper is accompanied by a map showing the land area produced by an 

 uprise of 600 feet (100 fathoms) above the present sea-level. It is 

 remarkable that this platform corresponds in position to the Continental 

 5helf of Eastern America above described. The descent from the 100- 

 'a thorn plateau to that of 1,000 fathoms is remarkably steep along the 

 rt'esteru margin off the coasts of the British Isles, France and Spain ; 

 see Professor C. Wyville Thomson's The Depths of the Sea, Plate VII, 

 i. 362 (1873). 



