238 PROFESSOR JAMES GEIKIE, LL.D., D.C.L., E.R.S., ETC., ON 



stood several thousand feet higher than at present. But 

 when we ask what evidence can be adduced to prove this we 

 get no satisfactory reply. We are simply informed that a 

 glacial climate must have resulted from great elevation, and 

 that the latter, therefore, must have taken place at the be- 

 ginning of the glacial period. Some writers, however, have 

 ventured to give reasons for their faith. Thus Mr. W. Upham, 

 pointing to the evidence of the fiords of North America, and 

 to the fact that drowned river-valleys have been traced out- 

 wards across the 100-fathom line of the marginal plateau to 

 depths of over 3,500 feet, maintains that the whole continent 

 north of the Gulf of Mexico stood at the commencement of 

 the glacial period some 3,000 feet at least higher than 

 now. Of course he cites the fiords of Europe as evidence 

 of a similar great upheaval for the northern and north- 

 western regions of our continent. Mr. Upham even favours 

 the notion that during glacial times a land-connection pro- 

 bably existed between North America and Europe, by way of 

 the British Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. When " this 

 uplifting attained its maximum, and brought on the glacial 

 period," he says, " North America and North- Western Europe 

 stood 2,500 to 3,000 feet above their present height."* 



That fiords are simply submerged land-valleys has long- 

 been recognised : that they have been formed mainly by the 

 action of running water — just in the same way as the 

 mountain-valleys of Norway and Scotland — has been the 

 belief for many years of most students of physical geology. 

 But it is hard to understand why they should have been cited 

 by Mr. Upham in support of his contention, seeing that their 

 evidence seems to militate strongly against the very 

 hypothesis he strives to maintain. No one acquainted with 

 the physical features and geological structure of Scotland and 

 Norway can doubt that the valleys which terminate in fiords 

 are of great geological antiquity. Their excavation by 

 fluviatile action certainly dates back to a period long anterior 

 to the advent of the Ice Age. And a like tale is told by the 

 fiords and drowned valley-troughs of North America, which 

 cannot be referred to so recent a j)eriod as post-Tertiary times, 

 Those who are convinced that our continental areas have per- 

 sisted throughout long aeons of geological time, and that rivers 

 frequently have survived great geological revolutions — cut- 

 ting their way across mountain-elevations as fast as these 



* American Geologist, vi, p. 327. 



