180 PEOCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Pob. 26, 



the mouths of the fiords of Argyleshire, and at Loch Treig, into 

 smooth rounded domes, and scored the rocks in a direction so rigidly- 

 even ; — how, on the brow of a hill like Craig Dhu, at the height of 

 1200 feet above the bottom of a wide valley, it could impress hori- 

 zontal scores and fluted hollows along the face of a shelving rock- 

 surface. 



§ 7. Land-ice moving in a volume like that seen in Greenland or 

 in the Antarctic Continent explains these and many other facts better, 

 in my opinion, than any other theory yet proposed; and, so far as I can 

 see, the only strong objection against it is the extraordinary climate 

 for this latitude that it requires : but some such extraordinary climate 

 is quite necessary to account for the fact of arctic quadrupeds, such 

 as the Reindeer*, Musk-ox, the Lemming, and the Lagomys, having 

 ranged into the south of England and the heart of Germany during 

 the Drift-period ; and one of these Lemmings (Myodes torquatus), 

 whose remains were found by Dr. Hensel of Berlin in the Drift near 

 Quedlinberg, is said to delight in so arctic a climate as seldom to 

 ramble further south than the northern limit of the woods, and was 

 found by Parry in latitude 82° N. "We cannot suppose these ani- 

 mals to have been mere stray wanderers ; for in one of the Welsh 

 caves, called Bosco's Den, Dr. Falconer tells us, upwards of one thou- 

 sand antlers, mostly shed, and of young animals belonging to the 

 Gervus Guettardi and C. priscus — species or varieties allied to the 

 Beindeer — were found in the bottom of the cavern (Journ. of Geol. 

 Soc. vol. xvi. p. 489). 



Such facts as these, together with boreal and even arctic shells 

 (like the Cyprina Islandica and Natica clausd) inhabiting the Medi- 

 terranean shores of Sicily, bespeak a climate perhaps as severe as, 

 with a certain amount of elevation, would account for Greenland con- 

 ditions in our latitude. " Not even on the verge of the arctic province," 

 says Edward Eorbes, in his last work, " are we to seek for the ana- 

 logue of the fauna of the Drift, but within its strictest bounds ;" and 

 yet this marine Drift to which he refers does not represent the time 

 of severest cold, which was that of the great land-glaciation. We 

 have therefore two sets of facts entirely different from each other, 

 one from the organic, the other from the inorganic kingdom, and 

 both alike demanding an arctic climate for their explanation. 



We cannot account for such a development of ice in this country 

 without supposing the whole of the atmospheric moisture, or nearly 

 so, to have fallen in a frozen or snowy condition, and to have had to 

 find its way off the land in the shape of solid ice ; and such a climate 

 in the latitude of Scotland cannot with any probability be supposed 

 without some great changes in the physical geography of the north- 

 ern hemisphere ; for it comes to this, that the whole of Scotland 

 must, during the period of greatest giaciation, have been within 

 the snow-line, which renders the conclusion, I think, probable that 

 our island must have then stood far higher above the sea-level than 

 it does at present. Without supposing some such great elevation, 



* The recent discoveries of Lartet in the cave at Aurignac show that the 

 Eeindeer inhabited even the Pyrenees. 



