Vol. 57.] THE CLIMATE OF THE PLEISTOCENE EPOCH. 459 



which now extends as far north as jS"ova Zembla) being diverted 

 from the shores of North-western Europe, the Arctic Sea, under 

 the colder conditions of the Glacial Period, would have become per- 

 manently frozen over, as the Palaeocrystic Sea is now^; ice-sheets 

 might have formed over the Scandinavian highlands and the British 

 Isles, and high -pressure conditions might have extended thence to 

 Greenland and northward towards the Pole, as shown in figs. 21 & 22 

 (pp. 458 & 460). 



Assuming that the maximum glaciation of the two continents did 

 not take place at the same time, it is necessary to suppose that the ice, 

 and with it the anticyclone of North America, retreated northward 

 (Greenland probably remaining ice-clad), and that coincidently an 

 anticyclone began to spread itself over Europe with the commence- 

 ment of glacial conditions there. When the ice-sheet had once 

 established itself in Europe, it would have tended, as in the case of 

 America before discussed, to become permanent. Not only would 

 it have been protected at all seasons against warm breezes from 

 the south by its prevalently anticyclonic condition, but such winds- 

 would have been diverted from Europe and towards the American 

 coast, because the Atlantic cyclone, no longer able to intrude itself 

 into the Polar basin, would have lain to the south of the Greenlando- 

 Scandinavian anticyclone, its longest axis, parallel to- th« edge of 

 the Greenlando-European ice-sheet, probably pointing, west-north- 

 westward as shown in fig. 21. 



The diversion of the prevalent winds of the northern part of 

 the North Atlantic from a south-westerly to a south-easterly direc- 

 tion would have tended, moreover, to divert the Gulf Stream, or 

 what might have remained of it, towards the American coast. 

 Some part of the warm water might possibly under such circum- 

 stances have penetrated into Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay, and have 

 ameliorated, concurrently with the south-easterly winds, the climate 

 of the a^ljoining regions^; while a-nother part, having lost a portion 

 of its heat, might have bent round eastward, returning to the 

 south in the form of an eddy along the shores of Western Europe. 

 This would have reduced the temperature of Great Britain, while 

 the possible closing of the channel between Greenland and Iceland 

 might have arrested the Polar current which now affects in a 

 similar way the climate of New England and Labrador. 



If the anticyclonic conditions existing statistically over Western 

 Europe in October 1881 (fig. 10, p. 436) had been continued north- 

 westward so as to include Greenland, the cyclone shown as lying 

 at that time over Davis Strait would have been driven south- 



^ A similar view has been expressed by Prof. James Geikie and Dr. Buchan ; 

 see ' Great Ice Age' 3rd ed. (1894) p. 8U5. 



2 Croll mentions (' Climate & Time ' 1875, p. 261) several cases pointing to 

 the former existence of a mild winter-climate in the extreme north of America 

 at a comparatively recent period (as, for example, in Prince Patrick Islawd, 

 Banks Land, Wellington Channel, and Melville Island), which may have been 

 due to the existence, at some stage or other of the Pleist03ene Epoch, of such 

 a state of things as that here suggested. 



Q. J. G. S. No. 227. 2 1 



