CHAPTEE XVIIL 



EUROPE DURING THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 



At this point it will be profitable to take a survey of the 

 condition of some other parts of the world during the great 

 Ice age. By the same marks which determine the extent 

 of the glacier in America, it is evident that the existing gla- 

 ciers of Switzerland and Norway are but remnants of what 

 formerly existed in these localities. 



James Geikie's statement of the situation in the British 

 Isles is sufficiently complete : 



During the climax of the Glacial period all Scotland was 

 drowned in a wide-spread mer de glace, which coalesced in the 

 north and east with a similar sheet of ice, that crept outward 

 from Scandinavia. To the west the Scottish ice, meeting with 

 no impediment to its course, overflowed the outer Hebrides to 

 a height of 1,600 feet, and probably continued on its path into 

 the Atlantic as far as the edge of the 100-fathom plateau, where 

 the somewhat sudden deepening of the sea would allow it to 

 break off and send adrift whole argosies of icebergs. The 

 height reached by the upper surface of the ice that over- 

 whelmed the outer Hebrides enables us to ascertain the angle 

 of slope between those islands and the mainland. This was 

 1 in 211 — that is to say, the inclination of the surface of the 

 ice-sheet was about twenty-five feet in the mile — an inclination 

 which would appear to the eye almost like a dead level, . . . 



The ice flowed off Ireland in all directions save to northeast 

 in Antrim, upon the coast of which it encountered the Scottish 

 mer de glace, which forced it to turn away to northwest and 

 southeast ; but along the whole western and southern shores, 



