8 Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
One of the first difficulties that suggests itself in the consideration of 
this particular dogma, this narrow zone to which organic life had to 
withdraw in post-pliocene times—is that during this epoch, which it 
appears was subsequent to, if not coincident with, the time when 
men first commenced to talk sense in Lemuria—i.e., 100,000 years ago— 
although the circulation of the equatorial currents must have ceased, the 
chilled waters from both polar regions continued their course with in- 
creased force, until they had invaded all submarine depths, and all forms 
of organic life unable to adapt themselves to the change, or unable to reach 
the place of refuge, perished. 
It would be difficult, however, to prove that polar marine currents have 
ever operated over greater areas or with more force than they do to-day, 
and frost now stretches its rigid winding sheet over tracts of land not long 
since, geologically speaking, teeming with animal life and covered with 
luxuriant vegetation, whilst in the same latitudes it has relaxed its grasp 
over others which for ages had been locked in its stern embrace. 
Ever varying in their direction during the lapse of years, mighty ocean 
streams have borne along their islands of ice loaded with the débris of rocks 
from glaciated regions, strewing the ocean floor as liberally now as in any 
previous era, dropping boulders to-day upon beds being laid down at the 
bottom of the sea, to be the chalk hills of future continents, and at still 
greater abysmal depths of red clay (both composed of exuvie of minute 
organisms, falling to the bottom incessantly through countless centuries ; a 
discovery the more astonishing when it is considered that this lifeless red 
clay, identically the same as that of the dry land so familiar to us, and so 
long a profound mystery, is seemingly chiefly derived from the insoluble 
residue of these Foraminifera, which is estimated at about only two per 
cent.) changing the climates of adjacent lands, and causing ever varying 
migrations of their fauna and flora, as well as of the life beneath the waters, 
in all time past. 
The glaciers in present elevated regions, the Cordilleras of South 
America and New Zealand, the Himalayas, the Alps, the Caucasus, may 
not be greater than those which descended from the lofty mountains, higher 
perhaps than any of these that rose above the plains covered with the 
forests of the carboniferous era. : 
Under the pluvial eonditions which then probably obtained, judging 
from the climates in which analogous vegetation flourishes at the present 
time, we may conclude they are not. At all events the marks of ice-action 
are to be seen, proving that in those days, as well as in our own, certain 
portions of the earth’s surface had their share of glaciation, however much 
the general aspect of the fauna and flora may suggest that the temperature 
