CEISOZOIC TIME — QUATiiilNAliY. 977 



2000 feet above the present upper limit of the glaciers, or the level of any 

 existing adequate abrading agency. The bowlders and scratches have been 

 traced beyond Geneva, even to Lyons, and to Vienne, in Dauphine. 



A second epoch of glaciation is generally supposed in Europe to have followed a 

 period of depression like that of the Champlain period, as mentioned beyond. J. Geikie 

 makes the number of Glacial epochs in Europe five ; but four counting from the epoch of 

 maximum glaciation. In his Ice Age, of 1894, he recognizes in Great Britain six epochs, 

 two of them after the Great Baltic glacier, or 4th. The first epoch in each case preceded 

 the deposition of the Cromer Forest bed (page 927). 



But the lofty mountains of Scandinavia — now in some peaks over 8000' in height and 

 glacier-covered, and then probably 11,000' or 12,000' — were not far distant, so that the 

 glacial deposits of Great Britain might well bear evidence of the fluctuating conditions 

 in the ice arising from modifications of climate and other causes. Oscillations in the 

 deposits from till to stratified gravels and the reverse may have required no great length 

 of time, and need no other cause. As Krapotkin, of Russia, says (1894), "The oscilla- 

 tions of the fringe of a vast ice-sheet may account for the formation of the layers which 

 are described as interglacial. The considerable changes which must occur in the direc- 

 tions of flow of the ice-sheet may account for the crossing of strige and erratics, as well as 

 for the occurrence of interglacial beds." The deposits referred to as marking the intervals 

 are not such as would necessarily have demanded, in each case, a long period of time. 



It is a remarkable fact that no ice-mass covered the low lands of northern 

 Siberia any more than those of Alaska. But recent accounts report that 

 "the High Plateau of Asia, which stretches northeastward from the Hima- 

 layas as an immense triangle having its summit at Bering Strait, bear 

 unmistakable traces, where studied in the region of the gold mines, of having 

 been covered with thick sheets of ice. This is true of the border mountains 

 of the High Plateau, the Himalayas, the Tian-Shan, the Altai, the Sayan, 

 the Great Khingan, and others. With these few data, the only plaus- 

 ible hypothesis is that all of the High Plateau above 2000 feet to the 

 north, above 3000 feet to the east of Lake Baikal, above 5000 feet in the 

 middle portions, and still higher farther south, were covered with ice" 

 (Krapotkin, 1894). 



Over the southward slopes of the Himalayas, evidences of glacier action 

 bave been observed down to a level, 2000 feet above sea level in the Kangra 

 Valley ; to 4700 feet on the southern slopes of the Dhaoladhar ; and to 5000 

 to 7000 feet in many valleys of Sikkim and eastern Nepaul. They occur 

 also on Mount Antilibanus in Syria, in latitude 34° N., on the Atlas Moun- 

 tains in northern Africa, and on Mount Kenya, a peak about 18,500 feet 

 high, not far from Kilima-Njaro, in British East Africa. 



In South America, indications of a great ice-mass are met with, from 

 Euegia, as far toward the equator as the parallel of 37° S., and especially, as 

 Agassiz has shown, in the great valley between the main chain of the Andes 

 and the Coast Mountains, to the latitude of Concepcion. Besides, glaciers 

 had great extent about some of the higher summits along the Andes, and one 

 near the equator. A. E. Douglass, of the Harvard College Observatory at 

 Arequipa, has reported the existence of glacial phenomena of great extent, 



DANA'S MANUAL — 62 



