THE BEDSHIEL KAIMS 303 



be a copious supply of aqueous vapour carried to a region 

 where it shall be congealed into snow ; and the other is that 

 the supply of snow shall exceed the waste arising from 

 melting. Once these conditions are established, they tend 

 to influence the climate of the areas adjoining. 



If the reader has comprehended the foregoing general 

 principles, we may pass on to consider the sequence of 

 events which the facts warrant us in believing to have 

 actually occurred: — 



Sometime after the physical features of the British Isles 

 had been shaped into their present form through the 

 prolonged denudation brought about by rain and rivers, 

 North-western Europe appears to have stood at a greater 

 elevation above the sea than it does at present. The geo- 

 logical evidence seems to point to this elevation having been 

 one phase of a series of oscillatory movements which affected 

 this part of the Earth. Under the conditions of maximum 

 elevation, it may well have been that the land stood from 

 six hundred to more than a thousand feet higher above the 

 sea-level than it does to-day. The "Gulf Stream" (or the 

 complete series of oceanic and aerial currents that goes by 

 that name) was then in existence ; although its margin on 

 the west of Scotland was situated more than a hundred 

 miles from the mainland. But, owing to the elevation of 

 the land, the North Sea, as we know it to-day, had not 

 come into existence. In its place was a broad and shallow 

 valley, occupied by the Ehine, into which main stream the 

 rivers of Eastern Britain flowed as tributaries, and through 

 which channel their waters were discharged into the Atlantic 

 by a mouth situated between Norway and the Shetland Isles. 

 With a broad land surface present on the east of Britain, 

 instead of the North Sea, none of the warm surface-waters of 

 the Gulf Stream could help to moderate the severity of the 

 climate resulting from the prevailing geographical conditions. 



Furthermore, with increased elevation of the uplands, most 

 of the vapour distilled by the Sun from the broad surface 

 of the Atlantic, and wafted north-eastward by the prevailing 

 winds, was precipitated in the form of snow instead of that 

 of rain. A comparatively-small lowering of the summer 



