450 Searles V, Wood, Jun. — The Climate Controversy. 



but I am not aware that there is much to show a greater degree of 

 warmth in existing low latitudes during geological periods, than in 

 medium, or in some instances high ones. Dr. Newberry, in his 

 Heport on the fossil flora of the Yellowstone and Missouri 

 Exploring Expedition, has objected that the climate to which the 

 Miocene flora of Greenland was due could not have beeu produced 

 by any cosmical agency, on the ground that, if so, a tropical climate 

 would at the same time have prevailed over those regions lying 

 between 45° and 50° of north latitude, on the eastern slope of the 

 Eocky Mountains, from which a Miocene flora yielding no truly 

 tropical plant remains has been obtained. This flora, however, con- 

 tains a large species of fan-palm [Sahal Campbellii) , belonging to a 

 genus which, if not strictly tropical, is at the present day confined 

 on the American continent to latitudes some 13° or more south of 

 the limit to which it reached on the flanks of the Eocky Mountains 

 during the Miocene period. The Miocene flora of Northern Europe 

 seems to indicate, however, a still greater difi'erence in climate 

 than this. The Cephalopoda and Keptilia of Europe during the 

 Jurassic and Cretaceous periods do not, so far as their remains 

 have yet been brought to light, appear to have been surpassed 

 either in number or size in any other part of the world ; nor 

 does there seem to be anything in the vegetation of these, or 

 of earlier periods, such as the Carboniferous, to lead to any con- 

 clusion different from that to which the animal remains would 

 point. Nothing, however, in European latitudes from Miocene 

 deposits has, so. far as I am aware, indicated such a gigantic rep- 

 tilian growth as that of the Crocodiles and Tortoises of the Sevalic 

 hill-beds of India ; and perhaps it is not contrary to what is already 

 known to infer that the Miocene deposits do, to some extent, indicate 

 a higher temperature in all latitudes than now prevails. 



No. 7. — Very little can be said as to the cause suggested under 

 this head ; for although attempts have been made to arrive at some 

 idea of the absolute temperature of space, the subject is too obscure 

 for much reliance to be placed on the conclusions at which some 

 physicists have arrived respecting it. It has been objected that no 

 increase in the temperature of the ^pace through which the Solar 

 System was moving could occur, except from an approach of that 

 system to some other stellar mass, sufficiently near to interfere with 

 its integT.ity. 



Such difficulties as may be presented, either by physics or geolo- 

 gical evidence, to tlie 6th suggested cause, seem to apply, toties quoties, 

 to the 7th also. 



Eeviewing now the whole subject as discussed in this paper, we 

 find it bristling with difficulties in whatever direction we turn ; and 

 feelings of doubt and bewilderment arise which outweigh the force 

 with which any one of the suggested causes might, at first sight, com- 

 mend itself to our minds. Nor are the difficulties removed by 

 taking refuge in the A^ew that all, or some of the suggested causes 

 have co-operated in producing the changes in climate which Geology 



