Dr. John Evans's Address to Section C. 417 



it appears to me desirable that the evidence brought forward should 

 be thoroughly sifted and all probability of misapprehension removed 

 before it is finally accepted. In the present state of our knowledge, 

 I do not feel confident that the evidence as to these three successive 

 Palaeolithic deposits has arrived at this satisfactory stage. At the 

 same time it must be borne in mind that if we make the Paleolithic 

 period to embrace not only the river-gravels but the cave deposits of 

 which the South of France furnishes such typical examples, its dura- 

 tion must have been of vast extent. 



In connexion with the question of Glacial and Interglacial periods, 

 I may mention that of climatal changes in general, which has formed 

 another subject to which much attention has of late been given. The 

 return of the Arctic Expedition, and the reports of the geological 

 observations made during its progress, which have been published 

 by Captain Fielden, one of the naturalists to the Expedition, in con- 

 junction with Mr. De Eance and Professor Heer, have conferred 

 additional interest on the question of possible changes in the position 

 of the poles of the earth, and on other kindred speculations. Near 

 Discovery Harbour, about latitude 81° 40', Miocene beds were found 

 containing a flora somewhat diff"ering from that which was already 

 known to exist within the Arctic regions. " The Grinnell Land 

 lignite," say the authors of the report, " indicates a thick peat 

 moss, with probably a small lake, with water lilies on the 

 surface of the water, and reeds on the edges, with birches, 

 poplars, and taxodiums on the banks, and with pines, firs, spruce, 

 elms, and hazel-bushes on the neighbouring hills." When we 

 consider that all of the genera here represented have their 

 present limits at least from twelve to fifteen degrees farther south, 

 while the taxodium is now confined to Mexico and the south of the 

 United States, such a sylvan landscape as that described seems 

 entirely out of place in a district within six hundred miles of the 

 pole, to which indeed, if land then extended so far, these Arctic 

 forests must have also extended in Miocene times. Making all 

 allowance for the possibility of the habits of such plants being so 

 changed that they could subsist without sunlight during six months 

 of a winter of even longer duration, I cannot see how so high a 

 temperature as that which appears necessary, especially for the ever- 

 green varieties, could have been maintained, assuming that Grinnell 

 Land was then as close to the North Pole as it is at the present day. 

 Nor is this difficulty decreased when we look back to formations 

 earlier than the Miocene, for the flora of the Secondary and Palgeozoic 

 rocks of the Arctic regions is identical in character with that of the 

 same rocks when occurring twenty or thirty degrees farther south, 

 while the corals, encrinites, and cephalopods of the Carboniferous 

 Limestone are such as, from all analogy, might be supposed to indicate 

 a warm climate. 



The general opinion of physicists as to the possibility of a change 

 in the position of the earth's axis has recently undergone modifica- 

 tions somewhat analogous in character to those which, in the opinion 

 of some geologists, the position of the axis has itself nndei'gone. 



DECADE II. — TOL. V. — NO. IX. 27 



