* 
114 W. J. MeGee—Theory of Glacial CVimate. 
the evidence of a single inter-glacial period is cumulative and 
overwhelming, while there is no indication whatever of more 
than one. 
3. If the hypothesis is true, submergence in polar and tempe- 
rate regions should have been coincident with glacial expan- 
sion, and emergence coincident with glacial retreat, but the 
Quaternary history of Great Britain, as drawn in the new text- 
book, includes two periods of maximum ice-extension, separa- 
ted by a period of submergence.” 
The editor of the American Naturalist* insists 1, that the 
“hypothetical stoppage of the Gulf Stream to account for the 
glacial climate of Northern Europe is not warranted by pale- 
a 
and ignoring, as they do, all of the eccentricity theory except in 
phases of the entire theory to which they are apparently de- _ 
signed to apply. To the writer these conditions do not appear 
to be fulfilled; and since the eccentricity theory, as now em- 
braced by numerous students, has been specially framed to 
meet the difficulties urged by the reviewers, it appears to him 
necessary that the failure of the criticisms should be impressed 
upon readers of current geological literature. 
So long ago as 1878, LeConte* showed that if the cold of the 
Quaternary were the joint result of eccentricity, precession, and 
secular refrigeration, it may have culminated in glacial condi- 
tions but once. More recently the subject has been admirably 
discussed by Wallace, in a treatise which has not yet received 
adequate attention on this side of the Atlantic.” It is there 
. Mag., x, 80. 
and Life,” 1881, Chs, vii, 1x. 
3 xvii, 177-8. ‘4 Geol. Mag 
5 “Elements of Geology,” Ist ed., 549. ® “Islan 
