438 H. H. Hoicorth — Elevation of the Urals. 



cool during time, we may assume that the process will affect tbe 

 temperature on the surface but little. 



There may, however, be an indirect effect, viz. that by a decrease 

 of water in the seas through the earth's absorption the moisture of 

 the atmosphere may become reduced, and in return the earth 

 may lose its protecting veil of clouds. 



II. — The Recent and Eapid Elevation of the Ural Mountains. 

 By Henry H. Howorth, Esq., M.P., etc. 



YOU have permitted me recently to publish two short papers in 

 the Geological Magazine in which I have advocated some 

 unconventional views. Perhaps you will allow me to continue my 

 induction. 



In the first paper I endeavoured to show that the identity of the 

 living Mammalian fauna of Siberia and North America necessitates 

 our postulating that those areas have very recently, namely, during 

 the Mammoth age, been connected by a land bridge; further that the 

 facts compel us to the conclusion that this land bridge must have 

 been across a portion of the Polar area, and that when it existed 

 comparatively temperate conditions prevailed there. 



In the second paper I endeavoured to show that an elevation of 

 the bed of the Arctic sea sufficiently to permit of such a land bridge 

 existing would entirely reverse the drainage of the great rivers of 

 Western Siberia, which, instead of forcing their waters into the 

 Arctic Ocean, would constitute a great Mediterranean sea in Central 

 Asia ; and further, that the debris and relics of this sea preserved 

 in the scattered lakes and intervening sand wastes of that area are 

 among the elementary facts of physical geography. 



I went on to argue that when the Mammoth and his companions 

 were living, the general slope of the Siberian continent was like 

 that of European Russia, with which it is so closely connected 

 in other ways, namely, that it sloped down from north to south; 

 the Obi and the Yenissei then having very much the same course 

 that the Ural, the Volga, the Don, and the Dnieper have now. The 

 line separating the two great planes, one of which now slopes north- 

 ward and the other southward, is the Ural chain. If the change 

 took place at the end of the Mammoth period, a view which I have 

 argued in favour of, we ought to find traces of it, and very patent 

 ones, in the Ural chain itself. The object of this short paper is to 

 point out that this is in fact so, and that the Ural mountains are a 

 very recent feature in the geography of Eastern Europe ; that they 

 date from the close of the Mammoth period, and were the result of 

 the violent disturbance of the earth's crust which then occurred, 

 and to which I have elsewhere referred. 



The view in regard to the Ural mountains here defended is not 

 entirely new. It had already substantially been advocated by 

 Murchison, under whose broad aegis I am well content to shelter ; 

 for I deem him, notwithstanding recent discussions, the first in the 

 long role of English geologists. 



