Cocxsurn-Hoop.—New Zealand a Post-glacial Centre of Creation. 9 
of the globe was at that epoch more equable, if not universally higher, 
which may reasonably be presumed to have been the case; more especially 
if, as it has been suggested, climatic zones did not exist until the com- 
mencement of the tertiary era. 
The further careful observations are extended and ice-marks sought for, 
where they ought to be found in the same latitudes, if the ice-cap covered 
one hemisphere: in all meridians at the same time, the less strong appears 
the evidence of the struggle for life, it is alleged that animals and plants 
underwent in the limited unglaciated regions proposed to have remained 
during one portion of the quaternary period ; a struggle which proved too 
greatfor many pre-existing forms, and led to their extinction, as some of the 
advocates of recurring eras of universal glaciation assert most probably 
effected the destruction of the giant Saurians, once the domineering tenants 
of land and sea in all parts of the world; whether that tenancy was alto- 
gether synchronous in both hemispheres is an interesting question if its 
expiry was due to an age of ice; it may well be doubted whether it was. 
So far as observations have been made in the southern hemisphere, 
there are no records of a greater amount of frost than inscribes its marks 
to-day. South Georgia, in latitude 54° 8., is frequently referred to as an 
evidence of what local influences may bring about in the way of glaciation ; 
exposed to the full force of the berg-laden antarctic current it is wrapped in 
snow and ice nearly to the water’s edge all the year, whilst fifteen degrees 
to the west forests of beech and fuchsia clothe the sides of the mountains, 
and humming-birds flit over the glaciers in the Straits of Magellan. 
The condition of this island and of Sandwich Island is **a warning," Sir 
Charles Lyell says, against concluding that glaciation must have been 
universal over one hemisphere at the same time. The opinion expressed 
by Professor Agassiz and others respecting the apparent work of ice in the 
Amazon Valley may nevertheless be correct. A berg-bearing current may 
have swept over the submerged eastern plains of South America, and the 
temperature lowered over a broad belt in that meridian ; whilst Australia, 
New Zealand, and South Africa were subjected to no such influence. 
The work that is being done by southern currents now must equal in 
magnitude that performed by the ocean streams which deposited the 
northern drift, now in one now in another meridian, over the submerged 
lands of Europe and America. Flowing up to the north, they carry their 
chilled waters under tropical seas whose surface temperature is 80° to 85°, 
not only up to the equator, but on, it has been most unexpectedly discovered, 
into the temperate zone as far as the Bay of Biscay—working, of course, 
great changes in the submarine inhabitants of vast areas—as similar 
currents have been doing in all time past, as the great underset flowed 
