V.—GEOLOGY. 
Art. LXXI.— Hemarks as to the Cause of the Warmer Climate which existed in 
high Northern Latitudes during former Geological Periods. 
By W. T. L. Travers, F.L.8. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 18th August, 1877.] 
AvrnHovcm nearly all modern geologists have been willing to admit that the 
phenomena of voleanos and earthquakes must be directly connected with 
the passage of heat from the interior to the surface of our globe, they have 
at the same time been indisposed to allow that this internal heat could have 
had any influence, even during the remotest geological times, upon the 
climatic conditions which affect the existence of life. Indeed, Sir Charles 
Lyell,who may be taken to have been the exponent of the views of the 
most advaneed geologists of the day, more than once expressly denied 
the existence of any such influence, and sought otherwise to explain the 
remarkable fact that, within the arctic regions, where the present climatic 
conditions are almost opposed to the existence of terrestrial life at all, there 
occurred, in past geological times, a flora as rich as that whieh now occupies 
the hottest parts of the tropics. 
It will, unquestionably, appear presumptuous in me to attempt to refute 
the opinions of Sir Charles Lyell and those who have followed him upon 
this point, but the recent investigations of physicists have led me to doubt 
whether those opinions are altogether tenable. Indeed, I think I shall be 
able to show that many of the facts mentioned by Sir Charles Lyell himself 
are only consistent with the proposition that the climatic conditions suitable 
io the maintenance of a luxuriant flora in arctie latitudes during early 
geological times were chiefly due to heat radiated from the interior of our 
globe. 
In order that my line of argument may be understood I must, in the 
first place, call attention to the received opinions of all leading physicists as 
to the original condition of the material of our globe. Now, whatever doubts 
might formerly have been entertained as to the existence of nebulous matter, 
these doubts have been set at rest by the use of the spectrum analysis, and 
the beautiful theory propounded by Laplace in regard to the formation of 
our planetary system, has thus received a very strong confirmation. His 
theory is that the sun was at one time the centre of a nebula, whose 
diameter extended vastly beyond the orbit of the most distat of our planets, 
