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But to-night I am going on the old lines ; the fact of an age of 

 ice is, I say, verifiable. Oar islands were then a desolation. With 

 the exception of a few A.rctio plants, and fewer Arctic animals, life, 

 which had just previously been so abundant and so luxuriant here, 

 bad well nigh disappeared. From Snowdon in Wales, from the 

 summits of the Highlands in Scotland, and from the Lake 

 Mountains, glaciers rivalling those of tbe Swiss Alps radiated 

 through the valleys in all du^ections. A great icefield moved away 

 from the Scottish Highlands to the S.E., " across the broad plains 

 of Perthshire, filling them up to the depth of at least 2,000 feet, 

 and passing across the rauge of the Ochil Hills, which, at a 

 flistance of 12 miles, runs parallel with the Highlands, and reaches 

 a height of 2,352 feet. Many mountains in the Highlands are 

 glaciated up to the height of 3,000 feet and more, while lakes at 

 their feet, 600 feet deep, have been well ice-worn." The various 

 forms of northern life retreated southwards from the cold, so that 

 we find remains of reindeer in Switzerland aud the south of France; 

 the musk sheep and the Arctic fox beyond the Pyrenees. Now 

 and then (I mean at intervals of some thousands of years) a milder 

 climate prevailed, and these animals returned, and among them 

 we also find that the hairy mammoth, rhinoceros, glutton, and 

 lemming peopled the lower grounds, until Arctic conditions once 

 more prevailed, At times the land sank until it was invaded by 

 vast icefields 1,500 or 2,000 feet thick, which had travelled from 

 Norway across the shallow North Sea, passed over Great Britain 

 loaded with debris from their native country, and uniting with the 

 smaller British ice-stream^-, pushed onward, and at last formed 

 cliffs out in the North Atlantic, some 200 or 300 miles west of 

 Ireland and the Hebrides, whence they sent westward and south- 

 ward enormous icebergs, as Greenland does now. 



So improbable, nay impossible, some one will say. How could 

 these things be ? What proofs have we ? When did it all take 

 place ? Above all. What brought it about ? Let us see what 

 answers can be given to these questions. 



The discovery of the great fact of the former existence of an ice 

 age prevailing over all the northern parts of the world, lasting prob- 

 ably some 200,000 years, and terminating about 80,000 years 

 ago, is imdoubtedly one of the grandest additions to our knowledge 

 out of the many which the nineteenth century has seen. We have 

 traced back Chaldean civilisation for 6,000 years ; Egyptian 

 civilisation almost as far. We can write the history of the Hittites, 

 whose great empire had actualb passed out of the memory of man 

 more completely than the discovery of America by the Norsemen 

 had been forgotten by Europe ; but what is all this and much more 

 to the discovery of the great Ice Age ? And it is wholly due to the 



