300 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



found speculation, far beyond my purpose in directing your atten- 

 tion to one of the grandest problems of modern geological research. 



Regarding now the second subject of interest to which I asked 

 your attention, that is to the more recently advanced views as to 

 the existence of a Carboniferous to a Permian glacial period, it will 

 be granted that this question presents less of novelty than the 

 phenomena previously referred to. 



For very many years glaciation has occupied a prominent 

 place in geological investigation, and there have been numerous 

 references to more ancient glacial agencies than those which have 

 made the Pleistocene glacial period familiar to us. 



In 1874 Mr. H. F. Blanford (Geol. Soc. Jour., vol. xxxi., 

 p. 534) noticed the extension of later Tertiary glaciation, both 

 beyond the limits of Europe and of the temperate zone : in Lebanon, 

 as shown by Dr. Hooker ; in various parts of the Himalayan range, 

 as observed by Dr. W. T. Blanford and Mr. Theobald; and in the 

 Naga Hills, Assam, as recorded by Major Godwin Austin. It 

 was claimed for the Himalayan region, and discussed by Messrs. 

 Theobald, Campbell, and Medlicott 1 , that part at least of this 

 glaciation was of older date than post-pliocene, and coincident 

 with great changes in the elevation of that chain. Mr. H. F. 

 Blanford did not endorse this view, arguing that the conditions 

 of physical geography did not support it, and that the evidence 

 favoured the supposition of a general prevalence of the frigid state 

 during later Tertiary time ; hence that general glacial conditions 

 might have obtained also in the Permian, or between this and the 

 Carboniferous periods. 



So far back as thirty-eight years ago Dr. Haughton 2 — to whom 

 our Society is so deeply indebted for constantly sustained and 

 sustaining interest and support — recorded the occurrence of pro- 

 bably ice-borne granite boulders embedded in the Dublin Carboni- 

 . ferous limestone 2 , and Dr. Croll, in his great work Climate and 

 Time, having first given reasons of weight why the marks of such 

 essentially terrestrial phenomena as glaciation should leave few or 

 no records in the ocean beds, which form the pages of Historic 

 Greology, proceeds to furnish numerous instances of the traces of 



1 Eecords Geol. Sur. IncL, Mem. G. S. I., vol. iii. p. 170. 

 " Haughton, Jour. Geol. Soc. Dub. (now E. G. S. I.), 1851. 



