' Distribution of Land and Water. 323 
in his memoir on the denudation of Wales, after pointing out, 
the great elevation above the sea, which portions of that region 
had formerly possessed, calls attention to the resulting varieties 
of climate that must have prevailed. “If,” he says, ‘the climate 
of our latitudes, when the coasts were washed by the new, red, 
and liassic seas, were tropical, as is generally supposed, still on 
the heights indicated on the vertical sections, we have ample 
space for tropical and temperate zones, each probably abounding 
in its own appropriate forms of life. And here, in connection 
with this subject, it may be remarked, that in Mr. Brodie’s re- 
cent work, ‘A History of the Fossil Insects of the Secondary 
Rocks of England,’ it’has been stated that, with certain excep- 
tions, the minute size of the great mass of the insect remains 
seems to indicate a very cold, or at all events, a temperate cli- 
Mate.” ie 
This appeared to Professor Ramsay not to be in harmony with 
the other fossil evidence, which proves that most of the crea- 
tures whose remains are preserved in the strata of the secondary 
Series inhabited a tropical climate. If the interior temperature 
of the land, whose inhabitants apparently existed under such 
ilerent conditions of climate, depended not only on the codr- 
dinate of height above the sea, but also on that of distance from 
the coast, in the manner here described, a more complete expla- 
nation would be afforded of these remarkable phenomena. The 
'scovery by Mr. Strickland, in the alluvial sand of Worcester- 
shite, of the bones of a hippopotamus, accompanied, not only 
by the bones of other mammalia, but by twenty-three species of 
fresh Water and land shells, of which nineteen are existing Brit- 
4 Species, seems to show that, even at a period so recent as that 
titer, °Post from which these remains were taken, remarkable 
islands scattered over an ocean enjoying a tropical tempera- 
a should lead us to expect more of such results as are here 
Instead of feeling surprise at the discrepancies which 
‘Seem to exhibit. oe 
‘T shall now attempt to illustrate some of the preceding gen- 
~V¢ws from the actual condition of the earth’s surface. ‘The 
tthe te temperature of the northern, compared to the — 
j amount of is superior warmth is usually ascribed to the greater oe 
nd in the former compared with the latter. Ithas 
Bical Society’s Proceedings, June, 1884, p. 94; and Lyell, p. 76, 9th edition. 
