THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND THE EARTH-MOVEMENT HYPOTHESIS. 259 



LETTERS RECEIVED. 



Major-General A. W. Drayson, F.R.A.S., writes : — 



The geological portion of Professor Geikie's Paper in regard to 

 the Glacial Period shows such vast research and attention to detail, 

 that I cannot presume to offer any remarks thereon. When, how- 

 ever, I find that he has devoted, some three pages to demolishing 

 what he terms the "Earth-movement hypothesis" and does not 

 even refer to any other cause, I venture to offer some remarks : 

 more especially am I disposed to offer these remarks, because a 

 writer on the Ice Age in the Edinburgh Bevieio for April, 1892, 

 after pointing out that the assumption of the Earth being pulled 

 away from the Sun, and thus causing the Ice Age, lacks the 

 essential element of scientific truth, despondingly remarks that 

 " there is nothing else to fall back upon." 



Instead of there being nothing else to fall back upon, other than 

 " assumptions " and mere hypothesis, there is a cause for the Ice 

 Age, which has merely to be examined by competent geometricians, 

 and the proof will be manifest that it is unanswerable. I make 

 this statement, not on my own conclusions only, but because a 

 considerable number of able geometricians have carefully tested 

 every detail and have told me that the case is proved. 



As briefly as possible I will explain what this cause is. 



More than 300 years ago the three principal movements of the 

 earth were said to be, a daily rotation, an annual revolution round 

 the sun, and a conical movement of the axis of daily rotation round 

 the Pole of the Ecliptic as a centre. 



The reason why the earth's axis was supposed to trace a circle 

 round the Pole of' the Ecliptic as a centre was, because the observa- 

 tions of 300 years ago were not sufficiently accurate to reveal the 

 fact that the Pole of the heavens (which is that point in the 

 heavens to which the axis points) was continually decreasing its 

 distance from the Pole of the Ecliptic, the imagined centre of the 

 circle. 



About 150 years ago it became generally admitted that the Pole 

 of the heavens in its circular course, slowly decreased its distance 

 from the Pole of the Ecliptic, and had so decreased its distance 

 during 2,000 years at least. 



Although this decrease in distance of the two Poles was a 

 recognized fact, writers on astronomy continued to state that the 

 one pole traced a circle round the other pole as a centre. 



More than 30 years ago the above contradiction was brought to 

 my notice, and I devoted ten years to the investigation of the 

 problem, with the following results. 



First, that the movement hitherto defined as a conical motion of 



