366 T. C. CHAMBERLIN 



earth's climatology. It becomes all the more strenuous if we cast 

 aside all resort to an early fervid state and a molten interior. Quite 

 irrespective of primitive conceptions, however, the edge of the prob- 

 lem has sharpened as we have been forced to recognize that between 

 the warm polar stages there were episodes of glaciation in strangely 

 low latitudes. It appears necessary now to accept as demonstrative 

 the evidences of extensive glaciation in India, Australia, and South 

 Africa in the midst of the later coal-forming stages of the Paleozoic 

 era. The glacial beds lie even between coal beds of Permian or 

 Permo- Carboniferous age; while, strangely enough, the areas of 

 glaciation approach, and even overlap, the tropics of Cancer and 

 Capricorn. And yet, figs and magnolias have grown in Greenland 

 since, and mild polar climates are as well authenticated after as 

 before this climacteric glaciation. Less complete evidences from 

 China' and Norway imply a very much earlier glaciation, falling in 

 the oldest Cambrian, or perhaps even pre- Cambrian, times. Still 

 more recently, similar evidences of early Paleozoic glaciation in 

 South Africa have been announced. 



The climatic student seems therefore compelled to face oscilla- 

 tions within the known geologic periods, ranging from sub-tropical 

 congeniality within the polar circles, on the one hand, to glacial con- 

 ditions in low latitudes, on the other, and these in alternating suc- 

 cession; while neither of these oscillations was permitted to swing 

 across the narrow limital lines of organic endurance. There is little 

 doubt that the ocean, the daughter of the atmosphere, is one of the 

 most potential agencies in controlling these oscillations. It is one 

 of its possible functions in such regulation that invites our present 

 attention. 



Some of the regulating functions of the ocean have long been recog- 

 nized. Certain less familiar ones have been brought under study 

 in recent years by a few students independently. Schloesing was 

 perhaps the first to clearly recognize that the carbon dioxide of the 

 ocean is an important agency in the regulation of -the atmospheric 

 content of this critical factor. As early as 1880^ he advanced the 



1 Willis, Third Year-Book, Carnegie Institution (1904), p. 282. 



2 "Sur la Constance de la proportion d'acide carbonique dans Pair," Coniptes 

 Rendiis, Vol. XC (1880), p. 1410. 



