Searles V. Wood, Jan, — The Climate Controversy. iiV 



in climates, then, considering how much the attempt is facilitated by 

 the large proportion of the earth's surface which is occupied by the 

 ocean, and by those vast tracts of continent of which we have no 

 geological knowledge, such as most of Africa and High Asia, it 

 ought not to be difficult to find a supposititious axis of rotation for 

 every one of those five periods when Greenland or Spitzbergen must 

 have possessed climates represented by existing latitudes below 40°, 

 viz. the Carboniferous, the Triassic, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, 

 and the Miocene. This axis would require to be so placed that the 

 various localities over the world, from which fossil organic remains 

 of these respective periods have been obtained, should also all fall 

 within 40° of latitude on either side of the supposititious equator ; 

 because the climates indicated by them appear, so far as these 

 remains furnish evidence, to have been all of them such as now 

 prevail within those limits. It would be an interesting test if any 

 one would be at the pains to collect all the notices in British and 

 foreign publications relating to these five periods, respectively, in 

 different parts of the world during the past fifty years, and, taking 

 a terrestrial globe, try to find an axis of rotation which would bring 

 these various parts of the world within such limits of supposed 

 latitude. So far as a very crude and perfunctory attempt which I 

 have made to do so enables me to judge, I do not think that it would 

 be found easj'^ to define such an axis. 



If, however, such could be defined, then, unless the polar circles 

 of this axis fell within the area of existing sea, future discoveries 

 ought to disclose that all the formations of these several periods 

 within such circles exhibited evidence of exclusively Arctic con- 

 ditions. 



Again, if we take the Glacial Period proper, the evidences j)re- 

 served of it seem to show that the Earth passed through it while 

 the axis was in its present position ; for although the evidences of 

 this period in the south are confined to New Zealand and South 

 America, and those in the north are, as yet, far from having been 

 carried across the great continents, they nevertheless raise a strong 

 presumption of this identity of axis having been the case. 



The difficulties presented by the features of the British, French, 

 and other Miocene, Oligocene, and Eocene deposits to the existence 

 of glaciers descending to the sea in Northern Italy and Switzerland 

 during the Eocene and Miocene periods, would hardly be removed 

 by a supposed change in the axis, as not only should we have the 

 contradiction of tropical or subtropical conditions prevailing within 

 a very few degrees of latitude of these so-called Glacial beds, but 

 the anomaly of the formations with which these beds are asso- 

 ciated in Switzerland and Italy furnishing no indication of such 

 a gradual change in their fauna and flora, as the gradual shifting 

 of the Arctic circle down to those countries might be expected to 

 produce, would be left unexplained. 



It is presumed, also, that a change in the axis of rotation would 

 produce one in the obliquity of the EcliiDtic, so that cause No. 2 

 would in that case combine with the one now under consideration • 



