Dr. Croll's Theory of Glacial and Warm Periods. 97 



New Zealand seas and Captain Hutton consequently attri- 

 butes them to the newer pliocene period. He says again : " I 

 have travelled over and mapped the whole of the province of 

 Otago and I have met with no stratified till, or any marine 

 beds intercalated between glacial or glacier deposits ; 

 although since the pleistocene period the land has been 

 undergoing elevation. On the whole, therefore, the evidence 

 is decidedly against the idea that a colder climate formerly 

 obtained in New Zealand . . . As New Zealand is 

 nearly antipodal to Great Britain, any change of climate 

 in one place, caused by a change in the position of the 

 earth's axis of rotation, would also necessitate a similar 

 change in the other place." He concludes : " There is no 

 evidence whatever of a glacial epoch having occurred in 

 New Zealand, although, if it had occurred, there is every 

 reason to expect that it would have left sufficiently clear 

 traces behind it. Professor M'Coy has also come to the con- 

 clusion that there was no glacial epoch in Victoria. He says all 

 our evidence in fact goes to show that there was no glacial 

 epoch in Victoria succeeded by a warmer modern one, but 

 there has been a regular and gradual falling of the tem- 

 perature to the present day." {Annals Nat. Hist., 3rd Ser., 

 Vol. XX, 194.) 



Mr. R.von Lendenfeld tells us in a paper read before the 

 Geological Society of London in April, 1885, that it is only in 

 the highest ranges of the Australian Alps that he could find 

 traces of ice action. No traces of ice action could be found 

 below 5,800 feet above the sea. This shows the traces are 

 of old glacier action and not of a glacial period. (See 

 Geol. Mag., Sec. Ill, Vol. II, p. 281-2.) 



What is true of New Zealand and Australia is true also of 

 Tasmania. 1 might continue, but this evidence, in which all 

 the most experienced geologists who have worked in the 

 Australian region concur, will suffice to show that there is 

 nothing in this part of the southern hemisphere corres- 

 G 



