254 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



prove correct." But this view received no support, English 

 geologists maintaining with Lyell that all the vicissitudes of 

 climate to which the earth's crust bears witness might quite 

 well result from changes in the distribution of land and sea. 

 The Glacial Period was therefore held to owe its origin to a 

 former wider extent and greater elevation of the land in northern 

 and temperate latitudes, and any indications of oscillations of 

 climate which might appear to present themselves in the pheno- 

 mena of the glacial deposits were either ignored or thought to 

 be entirely local, and due to some inconsiderable changes in the 

 relative position of land and sea. But the appearance in 1864 

 of Mr. Croll's remarkable paper " On the Physical Cause of the 

 Change of Climate during Geological Epochs" threw a new 

 light upon the question, and, by increasing the interest of geolo- 

 gists in the study of the Glacial Period, led the way to many 

 subsequent discoveries of interglacial beds, both in this country 

 and abroad. I have elsewhere endeavoured, at considerable 

 length, to show that Croll's theory is the only one which 

 explains the phenomena, 1 and I do not mean to re-discuss the 

 subject here, but shall confine myself to such a statement of 

 facts as may serve to indicate the nature and extent of those 

 climatic changes which took place during the Glacial Period. 

 We shall see that Morlot's suggestion that the facts might point 

 to some cosmical agency must be true, while the views upheld 

 by Lyell and many of his followers entirely fail to account for 

 them. 



In glancing over the evidence supplied by the interglacial 

 beds of Europe, it will be most convenient to begin with our 

 own islands, Scandinavia, and Germany — that is to say, with 

 those regions which, as we have seen reason to believe, were 

 overwhelmed by the great northern mer cle glace. I shall then 

 take up the evidence of the Swiss, Italian, and French inter- 

 glacial deposits, and conclude with some remarks on certain 

 cognate accumulations which appear upon the borders of the 

 Mediterranean. 



1 Great Ice Age, passim. 



