GEOLOGY. 607 



surface of the soil which we inhabit, lighted by a radi- 

 ant sun, was covered only with splendid forests and mag- 

 nificent prairies, in the midst of which wandered troops of 

 elephants, mastodons and rhinoceroses, all at once the whole 

 of this exuberance of life disappeared in one common ship- 

 wreck. A horrible mantle of snoAV and ice covered alL 

 northern Europe, and extended its folds even to the plains 

 of Germany. Overpowered by the cold, all those great 

 races succumbed and were buried beneath this grim winding- 

 sheet; a luminary dim and pale alone lighted up these life- 

 less solitudes, and the silence of death reigned everywhei'e. 



What was the first cause of these unexpected phenomena 

 of this period, justly called the glacial, which swept over 

 the globe formerly so heated? It will perhaps long remain 

 unknown, but its ravages have left everywhere indelible 

 traces. The waves of this immense sea of ice, rolling down 

 the mountains, tore off the projecting portions, l)ore them 

 away in their movement, and scattered them everywhere on 

 their passage. In this way numerous fragments from the 

 loftiest peaks of Scandinavia were transported to the 

 plains of Germany and Novogorod; others, violently torn 

 aAvay from the summits of the Alps, were strewed over the 

 slopes of Jura. 



Up to the present time geologists had supposed that 

 these fragments of rocks, these erratic blocks, as they are 

 called, which are met with far from the mountains of which, 

 as their structure shows, they once formed part, were trans- 

 jDorted by the violent action of the waters, and that they 

 had been carried away by the waves of deluges. Agassiz, 

 in his work on Glaciers, has shown that this hypothesis is 

 inadmissible, and that to the great movements of the seas 

 of ice must be attributed the transport of rocks which we 

 often find far from the spot where they were formed. 



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