CocKBUEN-HooD. — New Zealand a Post-glacial Centre of Creation. 9 



of tlie globe was at that epoch more equable, if not imiversally 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 

 great for many pre-existing forms, and led to their extinction, as some of the 

 advocates of recurring eras of universal giaciation 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° S., is frequently referred to as an 

 evidence of what local influences may bring about in the way of giaciation ; 

 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 giaciation 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 — workmg, 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 



