WOODWORTH: GEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION TO BRAZIL AND CHILE. 85 
Permian boulder-beds of Brazil I have set forth the evidence for the 
existence of glacial discharge of débris at or near sea-level. The 
occurrence of boulder-beds, presumably likewise of glacial origin, in 
central Argentina is supported by the finding of tillite in Permian beds 
on the Falkland Islands. These occurrences practically complete 
the evidence that the Permian glacial traces occur on all lands outside 
of the Antarctic circle in the Southern Hemisphere from shore to shore 
of the Pacific Ocean. In South America the evidences exist from the 
tropic of Capricorn southward to 52° S. L. They occur in South 
Africa coextensive with the sediments of the time. In Australia they 
occur over a vast area in the eastern part of that continent and in 
Tasmania. It is now apparent that no shift of the polar axis in 
Permian time will bring these evidences of glaciation into a better 
circumpolar distribution than they now display. Thus those hypo- 
theses which attempt to account for Permian glaciation by a shift of 
the earth’s axis of rotation have not been called for by any facts which 
we now possess. The discovery of tillite in the latitude of 52° S. 
diminishes the difficulty of the climatic problem by removing the 
supposition that the glaciation was dominantly a subtropical affair. 
The general absence of existing land in the Southern Hemisphere in the 
latitude of the Falkland Islands probably accounts for the present 
lack of signs of Permian glaciation in high latitudes. The Antarctic 
continent is too little known as yet to premise what evidences future 
explorations may bring forth. The facts upon which the Permian 
glacial period rest still come largely from the Southern Hemisphere 
where at present the ratio of area of land to sea is so small. 
In the Northern Hemisphere the Permian glacial deposits remain 
most typically developed and best known in the subtropical region of 
India, in the Salt Range and Talchir districts. But traces of ice- 
action in high latitudes are not wanting and are coming continually 
to light with the more critical diagnosis of the conglomerates of the 
late Palaeozoic terranes. The Permian breccias of England regarded 
by Ramsay as of glacial origin as early as 1855 appear to be now 
accepted as such by English geologists. 
These traces occur in Latitude 53 N. A. Julien supposes the coarse 
breccias of the Carboniferous in France to be of glacial origin, and — 
Kalkowsky attributes to glacial action a pebbly shale among the 
Carboniferous rocks of the Frankenwald. These occurrences in 
Europe pointing to some kind of ice-action if not in every case to the 
1 Halle draws the same obvious conclusion from his discovery of the tillite on the 
Falkland Islands, 
