98 Eenry H. Howorth — Elevation of Eastern Asia. 



to Alaska. This deductive axiom is inductively proved by our 

 finding the remains of this same vegetation rooted in the very beds 

 vrhere the Mammoths lie, and far beyond the present limit of forest 

 growth. The fact has to be explained in some way by those students 

 who do not emulate the conduct of the ostrich by hiding their heads 

 in the sand to baffle every pressing difficulty, and who recognize 

 that all hypotheses, however supported by authority, are in essence 

 tentative. 



How, then, are we to explain a change of climate so important 

 and so considerable? What are the conditions which impose such a 

 hard climate upon North-Eastern Asia, and under what hypothetical 

 condftions could we reasonably postulate a fairly temperate climate 

 in the Bear Islands, the Chukchi peninsula and Alaska? It seems to 

 me that the severe climate of North-Eastern Asia is governed partially 

 by the fact that that area is in close contact with and bounded on the 

 north by the Arctic Sea, which is a reservoir of cold, and partially 

 and probably to a greater extent by the fact that it is in close con- 

 tact with and bounded on the south by the icy plateaux of Mongolia 

 and Tibet. It seems to me, further, that if we could remove these 

 two sources of cold, we should at once transform the climate of the 

 district we are discussing from one of extreme Arctic severity to one 

 of a moderate and perhaps even temperate character. 



I will first say a few words about the Polar Sea. It is an 

 opinion very generally held that a continental climate presents 

 much greater contrasts, and is in effect more severe than a maritime 

 or insular climate, which has its extremes tempered by the continued 

 presence of water, and the isothermal lines of the world are a singu- 

 lar proof of the general truth of the position. The position is never- 

 theless only partially true. It is only true when the water is in 

 the shape of water. When the water is frozen and remains frozen 

 all the year round, and is consequently never above the freezing- 

 point, but always below it, the proximity of a great mass of water, 

 instead of acting as a tempering instrument, acts as a perpetual 

 refrigerator, and every w^ind that blows across it and over the land 

 is an icy cold wind. Hence the Polar Sea, so long as it remains 

 frozen, has the effect of greatly intensifying the natural climate 

 due to a high latitude ; and if it were removed, and replaced by 

 a mass of land, the effect would be much the same as if its v^'aters 

 were unfrozen : the result would be in fact to greatly temper the 

 climate. 



I have tried to show in a previous paper that when the Mammoth 

 lived, the polar area, or a considerable portion of it, was necessarily 

 dry land, otherwise that animal and its companions could not have 

 passed to and fro between Siberia and America, as we know they did, 

 and as we also know they did in very high latitudes. Hence, it follows 

 that when the Mammoth lived, either there was no Polar Sea, or its 

 area was greatly contracted, and thus this reservoir of cold did not 

 exist to continually sophisticate the north wind with its icy touch. 

 Pro tanto the effect of this must have inevitably been to modify the 

 climate in the direction of making it more temperate and genial. 



