446 Searles V. Wood, Jun. — T/ie Climate Controversy, 



torial diameter of the more solid part of the globe may at once be 

 reduced by nearly six miles, over four-fifths of its circumference ; 

 that is to say, the usually accepted equatorial protuberance of the 

 earth may be reduced from 13 to a little over 10 miles, which 

 amounts to a reduction of six miles in the equatorial diameter. 

 Coupling this with the existence in the northern hemisphere of large 

 tracts of land ranging continuously some thousands of feet above 

 the sea-level, he thinks that the spheroidicity of the globe, on which 

 the stability of the pole has been held to depend, may be regarded, 

 even at the present time, as considerably less than is usually sup- 

 posed. He then refers to the formation of mountain chains, the 

 elevation and submergence of continents, and the wearing away and 

 transport of their materials during geological time, which he urges 

 must cause changes in the solid crust of the earth, by which its 

 figure must be undergoing slight but continual change, so as to 

 acquire a new axis, and thereby cause a constant change in the axis 

 of rotation ; and he even suggests for the consideration of mathe- 

 maticians a certain supposititious elevation and depression of tracts of 

 the earth's surface, which he defines, and which he thinks would 

 alter the axis of figure and bring it 15° or 20° south of the present, 

 and on the meridian of Greenwich ; and he asks whether, if so, the axis 

 of revolution would not eventually correspond with it ? 



Mr. Evans insists on the contradiction offered by the fossil vege- 

 tation of Spitzbergen to the possibility of its having lived while the 

 position of the earth's axis subjected that country, as it now does, to 

 a long period of darkness. The statement of Professor Nordenskiold, 

 that he was unable to discover among the thick succession of 

 Miocene deposits in that country which yield the remains of this 

 vegetation any traces of ice-action, adds to this contradiction ; 

 because, until this,- it was conceivable that the vegetation in question, 

 though not forming such a flora as now lives in countries subject to 

 very severe winters, as, for instance, that of Canada, might never- 

 theless have by degrees become adapted to a winter of this kind ; 

 and by thus remaining torpid through the season of darkness 

 have been unaffected by it. Such an hypothesis, however. Professor 

 Nordenskiold's statement seems to put out of the question. But for 

 this absence of any indication whatever of winter cold, Mr. Croll's 

 contention that an increase of obliquity would cause an increase of 

 summer heat, were it sound, and there were conceded the possibility of 

 a large increase in the obliquity of the ecliptic, might furnish an 

 explanation of vegetation in high latitudes ; although such increase 

 would somewhat lengthen the periods of darkness of those Green- 

 land latitudes lying near the edge of the Arctic circle which have 

 furnished the remains of a similar vegetation. As the case, however, 

 stands, we can find no refuge in such an hypothesis, were it other- 

 wise tenable. 



Supposing, however, that the mathematical objections, which, 

 perhaps, require re-examination, were removed, there are some 

 objections to the theory of a change of axis from a geological point 

 of view. If, for instance, such a change be the true cause of changes 



