Searles V, Wood, Jiin. — The Climate Controversy. 393 



of any formation yet explored, and from nearly all its horizons, for 

 at oriQ place or other in these three countries nearly every horizon 

 may be said to have yielded fossils of some kind. These fossils, 

 however, v^hether they be the remains of a flora such as that of 

 Sheppey, or of a vertebrate fauna containing the crocodile and 

 alligator, such as is yielded by the beds indicative of terrestrial 

 conditions, or of a moUuscan assemblage such as is present in the 

 marine and fluvio-marine beds of the formation, are of unmistakably 

 tropical or subtropical character throughout; and no trace what- 

 ever has appeared of the intercalation of a glacial period, much less 

 of successive intercalations indicative of more than one period of 

 10,500 years glaciation. Nor can it be urged (though this would 

 be the contrary of what is urged in relation to the Glacial period 

 proper, in which the warm intervals are regarded as accompanied by 

 terrestrial conditions, and the cold ones by submergence) that the 

 glacial periods of the Eocene in England were intervals of dry land, 

 and so have left no evidence of their existence behind them, because 

 a large part of the continuous sequence of Eocene deposits in this 

 country consists of alternations of fluviatile, fluvio-marine, and purely 

 marine strata ; so that it seems impossible that during the accumu- 

 lation of the Eocene formation in England a glacial period could 

 have occurred, without its evidences being abundantly apparent. 

 The Oligocene of Northern Germany and Belgium and the Miocene 

 of those countries and of France have also afforded a rich moUuscan 

 fauna, which, like that of the Eocene, has as yet presented no 

 indication of the intrusion of anything to interfere with its uniformly 

 subtropical character. It can hardl}'- be contended that the mollusca 

 adapted themselves to a refrigerated sea, and again to a warm 

 one, without the facies of the fauna being changed, because we 

 find during the succeeding period, the Pliocene, the moUuscan 

 fauna gradually changing by the disappearance of the tropical and 

 subtropical genera, and by the incoming of species which now 

 generally inhabit Arctic and Boreal seas, thus indicating the gradual 

 approach of those climatic conditions which culminated in the Glacial 

 period. 



When it is suggested that at two distinct epochs during this 

 uninterrupted prevalence of tropical and subtropical conditions in 

 England and adjoining countries, glaciers descended to the sea 

 several degrees further south, we can scarcely escape the admission 

 that if they did so it could not have been in consequence of any 

 cause involving the existence of the present axis of rotation ; for 

 neither lofty land nor ocean currents could have modified the 

 climate of Switzerland or North Italy to such a degree as to allow 

 glaciers to descend to the sea there, while countries lying several 

 degrees of latitude nearer the pole were enjo3dng a tropical climate. 

 The only thing clear about these so-called Eocene and Miocene 

 glacial beds is that v\^e have much to learn about them ! 



As to the other fact which is essential to the Excentricity theory, 

 viz. the occurrence during the Glacial period proper of alternations 

 of 10,500 years warm climate, we find no indication of any such 



