•GEOLOGY. 



Aet. LXXI. — Remarks 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.S. 

 {Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 18th August, 1877.1 

 Although nearly all modern geologists have been willing to admit that the 

 phenomena of volcanos and earthquakes must be directly connected with 

 the passage of heat from the interior to the sm'face 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 advanced 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 which 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 

 to the maintenance of a luxuriant flora in arctic 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 distaut of our plauets, 



